


come home to my heart

by scheherazaade



Category: I Medici | Medici: Masters of Florence (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Found Family, M/M, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2020-10-03 20:23:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 37,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20458922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scheherazaade/pseuds/scheherazaade
Summary: How Francesco finds hope and home.(A modern AU) Jacopo is dead. His funeral is enough to bring Francesco home from where he’s been living and working as a historian in Rome. Now in his mid-twenties, he’s been estranged from his uncle since he was eighteen and avoiding Florence since then too. Back for the foreseeable future, he’s struggling to deal with being back while simultaneously trying to figure out what the hell he’s going to do with the Pazzi bank. Once in Florence, however, he’s struck with the unexpected complication of coming face to face with an old childhood friend.





	1. Late August

**Author's Note:**

> I feel I should preface this by saying that I have barely actually watched the show (read: skimmed), and while I know a little bit about the actual history behind it, this stemmed mainly from me aimlessly scrolling through my tumblr dash, and stumbling on gifset of Francesco Pazzi, and being subsequently sucked in because I have little to no self control. And that’s the power of Matteo Martari! I’m sincerely very sorry about the inaccuracies and mistakes (of which I am sure there are too many to count) you’ll encounter in this fic, and I hope they aren’t too glaring. 
> 
> Lorenzo doesn’t feature in person in this first part of the story. 
> 
> The title comes from “Supercut” by Lorde.
> 
> **TW:** past child abuse  
I do want to explicitly warn that there are mentions of past abuse (both mental and physical) that Francesco suffered at the hands of Jacopo while growing up, and that Francesco is still dealing with the effects of it to this day, just so that no one is caught off guard.

It was hellishly hot in Rome. It was the dying vestiges of August, after all, and the city felt the weight of it, the fatigue of several months of fierce sun, the tension of waiting for the heat to break, and for cooler days to come. 

There was no air conditioning in Francesco’s office. 

Office, was a charitable term, actually, for the repurposed storage closet in which he did his life’s work, but Francesco didn’t mind, mainly because it was _ a _ space that was wholly his. And - after living in the grand palace of his youth, he found he was much disillusioned with the concept of living in large, grand, and empty places - if he had ever entertained that illusion in the first place anyways. At times, in his weaker moments, he admitted that he was lonely enough in his small spaces already. 

Francesco wouldn’t have minded air conditioning though, or perhaps, a window to crack open for some tepid air. He’d rolled up the sleeves of his shirt to the elbow and unbuttoned the collar as far as was still publicly decent, and was still sweating. Leaning back in his chair, he took off his reading glasses, tipped back his head, and closed his eyes. He felt irritable and uncomfortable, and perhaps it was just the heat, even though he should have been used to it by now, or maybe it was a sign, some uncanny foreshadowing that bad news was brewing and trouble lay in store for him.

\--

Francesco had left his home in Florence practically as soon as he turned eighteen. He couldn’t get out from under his uncle and legal guardian, Jacopo’s iron fist fast enough, and he went to Oxford University in England, as far away as he possibly could, to do his undergraduate studies. It was prestigious enough that Jacopo had let him do it, even if he had very clearly made his disapproval felt. After three years away from his homeland though, Francesco had missed the sun, and the language and even the people, so he’d come back to the motherland, Italy, to do his graduate work. But he couldn’t bring himself to go back to Florence. The tainted and bittersweet memories of his home were still too raw and exposed. He had tried, and couldn’t reconcile the dichotomies that confronted him - it was a place where he’d been so happy with his parents and brother as a young child, and then the place where he’d been lonely and afraid and hurting for most of his adolescence. It was the place he knew more intimately than the back of his hand, like a handprint on his heart. It was a place where he’d never be more than the sum of his last name and his heritage, no more than his uncle’s political and corporate machinations, shunted into the role of banker, reduced to his expediency. A place where he knew he’d submit, bend and then break, to the tune of his uncle’s cruelty, because he’d long since had the fight broken out of him, if he’d ever possessed the capacity to be a fighter in the first place. 

In short, it hurt him, to think of Florence. 

So he’d settled for Rome. 

Francesco had been in Rome for going on six years now, having gotten hired as a research fellow at the Sapienza University of Rome after doing his master's and doctorate there in Renaissance history. It was the sort of thing Jacopo looked down on. Then again, Francesco had always been the sort of person that Jacopo looked down on anyways. 

He’d be twenty-seven this upcoming January. He felt weary of life and much older. 

\--

There came a knock on the door, and Francesco was jolted out of his reverie. Hastily putting his glasses back on, he called, “Come in!” 

The door creaked open, and his supervisor, the head of the History Department at the university, made her way through the door, skirting gingerly past the towering piles of papers and books that wobbled and then threatened to topple at the slightest movement. The room was small enough that when she navigated the obstacle of the books, she stood perhaps only a meter length away from his desk. Martina was not a short woman, and the effect was rather that she took up quite a bit of room in the already almost claustrophobic space. Her arrival was already immediately not a good sign, as she was the sort of supervisor that preferred to let her underlings live and let live, and Francesco could count on one hand the amount of times he had seen her, much less interacted with her directly, since she had hired him on. Actually, the arrival of anyone at all, to Francesco’s office was a shocking and cataclysmic event in and of itself. Academics tended to be a reticent and obsessive sort, as a general rule, and Francesco was no different. 

“Francesco,” she said, blunt as her manner was wont to be, but he detected both discomfort and a hint of sympathy in her tone and in the set of her severe features, which put him immediately on edge. “Have you checked your phone recently?” 

“No, not for the last few hours,” he replied, caught off guard and fumbling for it, but there was no reception in his office anyways, so it wasn’t uncommon that messages got to him late, if ever anyone bothered to send him anything, which wasn’t often, for reasons delineated above. 

Martina put a hand on his wrist to stop his fumbling. “Your family’s solicitor, a Luchino Tuzio, called the general office, because he couldn’t reach you on your cell. I’m deeply sorry to have to tell you this, Francesco, but your uncle, Jacopo, was involved in a car crash early this morning, and he’s passed away.” 

It was as if time itself had stopped, or rather, it hadn’t stopped, it was just moving in a different, nonsensical way, thick and slow, like half congealed blood. “Ah,” he heard himself say, distantly, faintly, through a buzzing in his ears, a rush of blood to the brain. It was a surreal, sort of out of body experience. “I’ll just-” he motioned faintly, to the door. “I’ll just go out and call him back.” 

He stood and went past Martina on autopilot. As he exited the room and went up the stairs, his phone regained reception, and the missed calls alerts started flooding in, little buzzes that went straight to the palm of his hand to accompany the buzz that was still in his ears and starting to spread down his body in tiny tremors. 

“Luchino,” he said, without preamble, as soon as his call connected. “This is Francesco. I’ve heard the news.” He’d only ever seen the man twice - once as a toddler, with his parents, and then after his parents’ funeral. From the time he had gone to live with Jacopo to essentially now, it had been Jacopo that had interacted with him, as head of the Pazzi estate - but he supposed that the pretense of grief and genuine shock allowed him this bluntness and familiarity. That and the fact that the man had been the family solicitor for as long as Francesco could remember. It went without saying that he didn’t have particularly good memories associated with the man, and it looked unlikely to change at this point. 

“Hello Francesco,” Luchino said, voice as bland and emotionless as Francesco had remembered it to be. “You have my sincerest condolences on the sudden passing of your uncle.”

Francesco closed his eyes and leaned against the stone wall, which was cool beneath his cheek. “What happened?”

“They’re not exactly sure yet, but it was simply a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the police think. It was a head on collision with another car at high speed - he was gone on impact - quick and painlessly. No foul play is suspected.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll need to come in as soon as possible to make arrangements for his funeral. And we need to discuss the matter of the will, and the affairs of the estate.” 

“Okay,” Francesco rasped again, and it shook him to know that aside from his brother, Guglielmo, he was the last remaining Pazzi. In the eyes of Jacopo’s will and of the inheritance, he _ was_, for all intents and purposes, the only remaining Pazzi, Guglielmo having long been written out and disowned for loving and marrying a Medici. He had thought he had known loneliness before, but in that moment, loneliness unlike anything he had ever experienced before rolled over him like a tidal wave, and threatened to consume him. And just as quickly as it had come, just when Francesco thought he might choke in it, it retreated. 

“Okay,” he repeated, a third time. “I’ll catch a train tonight, and we can meet tomorrow.” He waited for Luchino’s affirmation, the promise that he would email Francesco some preliminary plans and confirmation of the meeting, and then hung up.

That morning when he woke up, not even in his wildest imaginations might he have thought or predicted what this day might bring. When he rose at seven in the morning to the sound of green parakeets chattering outside his window, he was thinking of nothing other than getting some coffee into his system. When he was drinking his coffee and buttering his bread for his sandwich that he would bring in to the office for lunch, he was thinking about what he might write about for his next monograph in his current series on the socioeconomic history of mid-Renaissance Italy. He was in the office by a quarter to nine. All these comfortingly bland things that he did every day, without fail. He’d cultivated his life carefully around this routine. 

While he was reading up on Florentine money-lending in the 15th century, on the other side of Italy, his uncle was dying.

For a man with so many enemies, it was almost ironic that in the end, it was a car crash that had killed him, Francesco thought with a sudden spike of amusement. He wanted to laugh, he wanted to cry, and he felt numb and shaky, and very cold all of a sudden, even though it was still as hot as it had been half an hour ago, before he’d gotten the news. He was sad, and relieved, and scared all at once. He wished that he didn’t feel anything at all, and perhaps it would make this ordeal more bearable, but even when Jacopo had done his best to beat it out of him, his fatal flaw had never been not feeling enough, but rather, feeling too much.

\--

Francesco had managed to book a ticket on the last Freccia Rossa train back to Florence from Rome, which left at ten minutes before nine in the evening, leaving him just enough time to get his things in order. After having secured a term of indefinite leave from Martina, still feeling like his brain was scrambled upside down, he’d headed back to his tiny little apartment, to pack a bag of clothing and essentials and close up his apartment for the foreseeable next few weeks. He hoped it wouldn’t take longer than that - the thought of returning to Florence itself was not a pleasant one. 

The last time he’d been in Florence was for Guglielmo and Bianca de’ Medici’s wedding, six years ago, when he’d first returned from England. It had taken some gritting of teeth to make it through the entire weekend, but he loved Guglielmo, more than anyone in the world, and if anyone was worth returning to Florence for, it was his brother. Besides, Guglielmo’s wedding was a happy, happy affair, filled with music and laughter and light, even if Francesco had not much basis for judging such things. 

Guglielmo, he thought, abruptly, and wondered if anyone had yet thought to alert his brother that Jacopo had passed. Most likely not. Francesco picked up his phone to call him, but found he didn’t have the energy, or the heart, perhaps, to go through the conversation all over again, to face someone’s sympathy, and pity, or to afflict anyone with his own. Better not now anyways, he thought. Better to not burden anyone else with this. Perhaps it was arrogance to think he could shoulder it all on his own, or perhaps it was cowardice in not being able to face up to reality. Francesco had never pretended to be a paragon of virtue. He was well aware of his numerous flaws. 

He let his phone drop back onto the bed with a thud, and went back to mechanically folding some clothes into the duffel bag that he kept mainly for short conference trips. There was an unpleasant sort of fine tremor still running through his body, and twice, his hands shook so badly that he almost dropped something on the floor. 

Holding his bag and the garment bag that kept a fine suit, one that he would doubtless have to wear to the funeral and probably to subsequent meetings of family business, he sank into the armchair nearest to the front door, covered his face with his hands and breathed deeply for some time, trying to calm the incessant racing of his heart, that sharp undercurrent of anxiety. He sat there for an interminable time, trying to find his nerve and steel himself. It was ridiculous, he thought, with a sliver of not unfamiliar anger and self-loathing. He was a grown man, and still scared to go back to his hometown. Still scared to face the spectre of his uncle, which loomed larger than ever in the event of his death. 

Francesco stood and checked his watch. A little past eight o’ clock. He brought up a hand to massage his temple, next to his left eye, behind which a migraine had slowly begun to throb, even though he hadn’t noticed when it had begun. “Time to go,” he said, quietly, to his empty little apartment, which still stood so barren and spartan after six years of living there, and then he turned out the lights on that sad little scene and made for the train station. 

\--

There had been a time, ostensibly, where Francesco had been more a convivial child, even if it was by minute degrees.

Francesco had none of his brother’s natural openness, those smiles and freedom of body language, that so endeared him to others, even before he had opened his cheerful mouth. Jacopo had used to say that this quality of Guglielmo's was what made him soft and weak, but Francesco had always envied his brother this. He suspected, in his more introspective moments, that he had always been reserved and cautious by nature, but once upon a time, he’d had friends, and enjoyed the company and warmth of others. 

And then had come those years of isolation in his adolescence, where he’d been mostly shut away from others aside from his uncle and Jacopo’s friends, homeschooled by a private tutor from age seven to eighteen. Guglielmo had been old enough to leave home soon enough, leaving Francesco to bear the brunt of Jacopo’s abuse. He did not begrudge his brother this - he would rather have - and had - borne a thousand blows from Jacopo than have had a hand laid on his beloved older brother. And how could Guglielmo have known later how bad it got, when Francesco could hardly even articulate the horror of living with Jacopo himself now, much less as a frightened fifteen year old? 

By the time he emerged from the proverbial prison of Palazzo Pazzi, the overall effect was that he didn’t quite know how to talk to people anymore, at least in the ways that preceded a friendship. 

He’d tried, for a time, when he’d first left to go to Oxford, putting himself out there, and trying to join societies and attend the parties that he was invited to. It was uncomfortable though, to force himself out there when all he really wanted to do was curl up back in his little room with a book and a cup of thick hot chocolate that reminded him of home in the simplest of ways, free of all the baggage. He struggled with this conundrum later. Did he have a right to feel lonely and isolated when it was of his own making? He wanted to be alone, or at least, to exist in a carefully controlled environment of his own making, and then, all of a sudden he didn’t. When he was with people, he was exhausted, and when he was by himself, he wanted - he wanted something, someone, to reach out for. That had always been the issue. He had always wanted a hand to hold, but when it was extended, he couldn’t bring himself to trust enough to take it. 

He was no good at forging these bonds of friendship anyways. This he knew for sure, because a few weeks into this uncomfortable existence, he’d stumbled upon two of his classmates in the kitchen of some house party, gossiping about him. 

“What do you think about Francesco?”

“What about him?”

“Oh he’s nice enough, sure, and smart as hell, and pretty attractive too, if you’re into that brooding type, but if you get down to it, but it’s just so hard to talk to him, you know? And there’s something so unsettling about the way he looks at you.”

“Ah, I know what you mean. He’s really awkward, poor guy, just skulks around everywhere, doesn’t say much, flinches a lot when people come up to him. Doesn’t know how to talk to people for sure. Did you see him last week when some girl asked him to dance? Sheer fucking terror, I tell you.”

Some laughter at his expense. 

It had hurt, even if it wasn’t untrue, and even if it wasn’t necessarily meant unkindly. He'd thought of telling Guglielmo this during one of their weekly phone calls, but knew that while his brother would rush to assure him that it wasn’t true, in Francesco’s heart of hearts, he knew that it was true. So he’d beat a hasty retreat, and hadn’t tried to venture out since. 

These days, he spoke to Guglielmo over the phone weekly, checked in with his adviser, and had academic conversations and collaborations with his colleagues. On occasion, when he went to academic conferences both inside and out of Italy, he’d talk to fellow historians and researchers. He’d nod to his neighbors when he saw them, coming in and out of work, although he had his suspicions that the cagey fellow that lived three doors down, was running a very elaborate and involved drug trafficking scheme. When Jacopo called, every so often, typically to yell at him for an hour straight about how he was shaming the family name, and to come back to Florence immediately to help run the bank, it wasn’t really the sort of conversation that necessitated Francesco’s verbal involvement. 

This was really the extent of his human interaction. If it was sad and lonely, then that was all right. Francesco had forgotten how to be anything else. 

\--

Francesco arrived in Florence at around half past ten, having given in and swallowed a couple Advil dry in an attempt to ease his migraine on the way there. It hadn’t kicked in yet though, and when he got off the train at Santa Maria Novella, all he wanted to do was find some place where he could lie down and close his eyes, and leave this awful day behind. 

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply for a moment. Yes, this was Florence, the smell of it, the taste of the wind in the air, the rush and crowd of it, the weight of its history, emanating from the stones beneath his feet. He would know it blindfolded and half dead. It was bittersweet, this homecoming. He’d been running away for so long. He’d longed to be back home for so long, and at the same time, he couldn’t bear to go back, or be back. 

He hadn’t really been in the frame of mind to plan things out thoroughly in his rush to return home, but he supposed that he’d be staying at Palazzo Pazzi, his ancestral house, empty now that Jacopo’s body was presumably lying cold and dead in the morgue. It wasn’t a pleasant thought - neither the idea of going back to Palazzo Pazzi, nor the idea of Jacopo’s dead body - and Francesco’s mouth felt dry all of a sudden. Annoyed with himself for being so maudlin, he shouldered his bag and started the fifteen minute walk. 

When he approached the colossus of building that was Palazzo Pazzi, he was grateful to see that the lights outside had been turned on, and that the old estate caretaker, the familiar figure of that whip thin man, was sitting outside, waiting for him. Somehow, his brain had thought, if only he could just reach Florence, if only he could just reach Palazzo Pazzi, that his journey would be done. He hadn’t put much thought into how he’d get in, without a key, and was abruptly thankful that Luchino had presumably alerted the staff. 

“Signor Pazzi,” the caretaker said, rising and coming down the steps to meet Francesco. He dropped a heavy iron keyring into his palm. He looked like he wanted to say something, to offer his condolences, extend a hand in comfort. 

“Thank you,” Francesco said, dully, to head the pity off at the pass. He didn’t think he could handle it if someone started spouting false platitudes about what a great man Jacopo was, and how he’d be missed. “Good night,” he added, turned and unlocking the great heavy front door, then shutting it behind him, with a final thud.

And then he was inside the courtyard. It was the first time he had been back here since his desperate flight away from this house and place at eighteen. It was like stepping back in time, because nothing had changed since he’d been away. The pristine, marble archways, the waving fronds of plants in their intricately painted pots, the sculpture poised on the fountain in the center of the pavilion, burbling steadily away. Now here was the site where he’d been the happiest, and the site where he’d been the lowest he’d ever been. Here was an exercise in opposites.

A harsh and artificial light emanated from the hanging lamps that hung around the courtyard, but they were not enough to chase away the shadows that lurked in the corners, and like a camera flash going off, he was suddenly thrust back into time, those hundreds of instances where he’d been shoved down onto the marble floor and been roared at, kicked at, spit at, the way his blood and tears had run on these very stone tiles, to be washed away by day, and then renewed by night, and he had scrabbled, clawed his way away from Jacopo, his efforts fruitless. Those thousand nights where he had wept into the fountain, locked out of his room as a punishment, completely and utterly alone, missing his parents, missing Guglielmo, missing friendship and family, and all the kindnesses extended from those relationships, hugging himself to keep warm and to keep from fracturing into pieces. 

Francesco staggered, almost going to his knees, heart pounding suddenly, breath coming in wheezes, tears blurring his eyes. He could not carry this weight of his past, he thought, agonized, half mad with sudden fear. It was too heavy, it hurt too fucking bad to have to think about. 

He could not stay here. How could he have ever thought he could? He’d have to get a hotel room somewhere, at least for the night, or, more probably, for the next few weeks. Steadying himself, although he felt as though he might shatter at any moment, he picked up his bags from where they had fallen in his panic, and made his way out of the Palazzo, exiting just as quickly as he had come. 

Eight years later, his years of adolescence remained a great chasm of unresolved agony.

\--

The light of morning woke him. There was a brief instant of blessed disorientation where Francesco didn’t know where he was, and didn’t remember the events of the past day. A moment where the sun slatted across his white bedsheets in a sort of beautiful, dappled pattern, and Francesco was warm and still half caught in the threads of slumber. Then it came flooding back. It was morning. He was in Florence. He was in a hotel room. Jacopo was dead. He had things to do, today. 

He thought about just staying in bed for the whole day and ignoring the whole lot, but it was more an exercise in impractical thoughts as comfort rather than something he was actually entertaining. What choice had there ever been for him but to keep moving forward? To keep getting out of bed no matter what. 

It was about then that he realized how disgusting he felt. He’d collapsed into bed as soon as he could that last night, probably half scaring the hotel receptionist to death when he’d stalked in at nearly midnight and asked for an available room. It meant that he hadn’t showered since yesterday, after a full day of sweating in the heat, and then traveling. For someone with near pathological needs for cleanliness, it was nearly unbearable. His face felt puffy and sore from crying or maybe dehydration, even though he couldn’t remember it, although he supposed he must have wept last night at Palazzo Pazzi, or maybe even throughout the night, unwittingly, and his head still pounded, although it was not as insistent of a pain as last night. He thought that maybe he should be hungry, having not eaten since lunch yesterday, but he wasn’t.

With a groan, he hauled himself out of bed and went for the shower. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror as he shucked off his clothing, and he looked tired, pale, and wan. His hair was getting long again, and it fell into his eyes in a thick tangle. 

There, under the spray of hot water, he was able to gather some presence of mind, and to think about what needed to be done. Of course he had a meeting with Luchino today, and then he’d presumably have to figure out the logistics of Jacopo’s passing. He let his forehead fall on the tiled wall. He’d never been one for making the big decisions, for leading the charge, but there was no one left, besides him, to do it. He finished lathering up his hair and started rinsing it out, and willed himself not to fuck everything up. 

\--

Ten in the morning found him in Luchino Tuzio’s office, a little ways outside of the city center of Florence. Close enough that Francesco had walked there, through the throngs of tourists and past the Duomo. It had still been early enough in the day that the sun hadn’t reached its peak yet, which meant it had been a very agreeable temperature, and further out of the city center, the grounds around the path were riotous with late summer sunflowers and what remained of the scarlet poppies. Francesco was in the habit of noticing and automatically cataloguing the little details - he’d had quite a lot of practice occupying himself by doing so whilst he sat alone at social gatherings. 

They were having coffee, and there was a little spread of biscuits out on the table between them, and it was all a bit of a farce of a very pleasant meeting, when in reality, the reason they were convening was quite a bit more grim. Francesco sipped his coffee for lack of anything better to do, but didn’t touch the food. His stomach was still roiling too hard for that, although he knew, ostensibly, that he did need to eat something. 

“Good to see you, Francesco,” Luchino said, raising thin eyebrows. “Thanks for coming so fast, and my condolences again, for your loss.” 

The fact that Luchino put Jacopo’s passing as a “loss” sent Francesco into a little bit of a tailspin. It certainly wouldn’t have been a word he would’ve used to describe the event. He thought abruptly of the words _ sic semper tyrannis_, and stifled a laugh, which was fucked up, but there it was anyways. He had a feeling that it wouldn’t be appreciated. “Thank you,” he managed to say. 

“It hasn’t gotten out yet publicly, the news of Jacopo’s death,” Luchino said conversationally, as if they were just talking about the weather. Francesco kind of hated him for his blasé attitude, but only because he was jealous of it. “And given that he was quite the figure, with his status as former bank president, we’re going to need to make a brief announcement. I was thinking, a press release of some sort.”

“Fine,” Francesco said, putting down his coffee cup and then clenching his hands into fists underneath the desk so hard that his nails were pressing crescents into his palms. 

“Now, have you given any thought to the funeral proceedings?”

“No-” Francesco paused. “No I haven’t thought of it, really, but-” He wondered if there was a way to say that he didn’t want a huge procession, nor a reception, and that the thought of giving a eulogy for his fucking bastard of an uncle was far beyond his capabilities to do without throwing up that didn’t make _ him _ sound like the bastard. 

There was a beat of silence when Francesco didn’t continue. “No problem,” Luchino said smoothly. “I’ve made an appointment at the funeral home for you this afternoon, and the director should be very able in helping you decide how to proceed.”

He passed Francesco a memo, with an address and a time written on it, and Francesco took it mutely. 

“Now,” Luchino steepled his hands together. “There is the matter of Jacopo’s last will and testament, and of course, the inheritance, and other such affairs. We could go over them now, or-” He looked at Francesco for a moment, who sat, silent and withdrawn in his seat, and took mercy. “-we could wait until after the funeral to continue.” 

“After,” Francesco said. “Please.” He wondered if he looked as tired and frayed as he felt. He wondered if the abject terror he felt about taking on all of this at once was displayed as baldly on his face as he thought it might be. 

“It can wait then, till after the funeral,” Luchino relented, nodding. “But you should know, that the Pazzi Bank, the estate, including the house and the fortune, should all fall to you now.” 

They both knew what was going unsaid. Who else was there to inherit? Who else was there to carry on the legacy? To be heir was a burden that could hardly be borne. 

\--

If Francesco found it hard to ask people for help, it was only because he really didn’t _ have _ anyone to ask for help, and he’d fallen out of the practice. He’d been alone for so, so long, and he’d grown accustomed to it. But he stood here now in the hallway outside Luchino’s office and wanted desperately for someone. Someone to tell him it was going to be okay. Someone to make these terrible decisions for him. Someone to support him. His nerves were shot to hell and he wondered how on earth he would make it through. It was day one, and already, his mental state didn’t exactly bode well. As always, there had only ever been one choice, and so he steeled himself and dialed the number.

“Francesco!” His brother said cheerfully when he picked up. Guglielmo was almost always cheerful - it was like he didn’t know how to be anything else. It was one of those mysteries - that Francesco and Guglielmo were polar opposites in so many ways - in both appearance and demeanor - and yet, they had stayed each others’ closest confidantes. His brother, who took after his father, had grown tall, broad shouldered, and incessantly cheerful, and he, who took mostly after his mother, had remained quite small, slender, and serious. There was a natural levity in Guglielmo’s bearing that Francesco had never figured out how to mimic. “What a wonderful surprise to hear from you today! I was getting worried. You didn’t call yesterday, and you always call on Thursdays.”

“Guglielmo,” Francesco said, for lack of anything better to open with, for lack of breath around the lump in his throat to say anything else. It was a plaintive, child’s cry. Here in Florence, in this instant, it was what he felt reduced to - a child reaching out for a lifeline, for his older brother. “I’m in Florence. Jacopo’s dead, and I- I don’t know what to do.” 

He heard his brother’s sharp intake of breath, and tried to modulate his own harsh breathing, and ease the tightness in his chest, even though he knew Guglielmo would hear it in his voice regardless. “Will you come, please?” 

\--

“You should have called me the minute you got the news,” Guglielmo said, firmly, but without a hint of judgment or reprobation. Francesco loved him all the more for it. “I would do anything for you, Ciccio, you know that.”

Guglielmo had left to get him almost immediately after Francesco had called, which was a good thing, because any longer on the phone, and Francesco would probably have lost it completely, which would have been a humiliating cherry on top of everything that had already happened. 

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“None of that,” Guglielmo said, pressed Francesco’s face further into his shoulder by hugging him tighter. Francesco breathed in that familiar scent of spice, neroli oil, and oak. It had been six years since he had seen Guglielmo in person - six years too long. Every time he saw his brother - it was as close to coming home as he could imagine it. They stood there for at least five minutes, Guglielmo just holding him until he could collect the shreds of his dignity around himself, and pull himself away. It was a position they had adopted often when they were still only children who had just violently and abruptly been torn away from their parents by the newfound spectre of death, and thrust right into a new nightmare. 

“Wow,” Francesco said, abruptly. “Can’t believe the bastard finally kicked it.” 

There was a beat, and they both burst into laughter. It felt good, like the sun was peeking out from behind the clouds after a long storm. 

After their laughter had died down, Francesco felt the need to say, “I don’t want you to think I’m grieving over his death or anything.” 

A beat. “How do you feel? Or, what _ do _ you feel?” 

“I’m not sure,” he responded truthfully. “So much, all at once. Relief, mainly. And then, sheer terror, at having to deal with everything alone. The bank, the estate, the funeral-” He exhaled hard. “Fuck!” He felt ashamed then, and selfish and unfair. After all, Guglielmo had lost an uncle too, even if the circumstances were somewhat different. Guglielmo had had his own differences with Jacopo, and had suffered manipulation and been sentenced disownment at his hands. “And you?”

“Relief, also. Some regret.” Guglielmo shrugged noncommittally, and then took Francesco’s hands in his own. “Let’s take it step by step for now. You’ve always been the smart one of the two of us, but let me help you take care of it for now. Whatever I can do. Yes?”

“Yes,” Francesco said, holding on tight to Guglielmo’s hands, thinking he had never been so thankful in his entire twenty-seven years.

\--

They went together to the funeral home together to meet the director. The building was nondescript, and inside was decorated with warm colors and beautiful paintings, which was probably intentional, but the effect was essentially mitigated by the fact that there was a woman waiting in the lobby, hunched over in her chair, trying to suppress her crying but rather failing at it, so every sob that came from her looked and sounded as if it were punched out of her by force, that harsh, unpleasant sound, and Francesco flinched as he passed her. He might do well to remember that nothing good ever happened in funeral homes. He was struck by a sudden unpleasant query, a morbid wondering, if this was the funeral home that had dealt with the burial of his parents, but he wasn't brave enough to ask. The thought made his stomach turn anyways. 

The funeral director, Giorgio - Francesco wasn't listening closely enough to really register his last name - was appropriately kind, sympathetic, and professional without being overbearing, and Francesco tried hard not to think about how he got so good at it. Guglielmo, bless him, took charge of the conversation from the get go, which allowed Francesco to zone out for a little while Giorgio droned on about God knows what.

His migraine had returned with a vengeance, that pounding behind his left eye, and he was so fucking exhausted, even though it was only mid-afternoon, that it was some time before he realized with a start that he must have missed a question, as both Giorgio and Guglielmo were looking at him expectantly. 

“Sorry.” Francesco scrubbed at his eyes. “Could you repeat that?”

“Of course,” Giorgio said, sounding sincere. “I was asking if you’d thought about anything in particular that you might like for the casket.” He produced a catalogue from under his desk and Francesco was suddenly struck again by the wholly inappropriate urge to laugh. A catalogue, as if he were shopping for clothes or what the fuck ever else, instead of his uncle’s casket.

“Nothing like that,” he said, taking a brief glance at the ostentatious and embellished options and wincing. “Something as simple as possible. Black, if possible.” 

“And the service? Perhaps a full mass and then public reception-”

“No,” Francesco said. “There'll be a funeral mass, but it’s going to be very small and private. Family only. No reception. No pallbearers. No flowers.” He massaged his temples, and felt Guglielmo put a hand on his knee underneath the table. “I want it to be quick and as simple as possible.” 

“And the eulogy?” Giorgio ventured cautiously. 

Francesco stayed silent. It was Guglielmo that answered for him. “No eulogy.”

\--

He returned to his hotel room sometime after having dinner with Guglielmo. He’d wanted to beg off the meal because he felt like shit, even though he hadn’t really wanted to be alone either, but he hadn’t eaten all day and most of yesterday, and once Guglielmo had figured that out, there was really no way he was getting out of dinner. He hadn’t had the energy to contribute much to the conversation, but it was all right, because he’d never had to pretend around his brother, who knew him so well, and could easily fill the gaps in the conversation with updates on his life, his wife, Bianca, how they were thinking of trying for a child, how his work was going as the advertising manager of the Medici Bank, and other such comforting everyday prattle. Francesco was grateful for it. 

He did, though, have the energy to engage in one particular and familiar battle with Guglielmo. 

Over wine, after their meal was over, his brother had said, faux casually, “So when are you coming back to live in Florence?” 

“We’ve had this conversation many times before. Probably never.”

“Ah good, you’re open to negotiation then. Why not? I know it’s not because you love Rome so much.”

Francesco bristled at this mostly true accusation. “Yeah well, not preferring Rome is different than actively disliking Florence. And this topic is _ still _not up for debate, however much you might like to think it is.” 

“You don’t dislike it. Florence, is home, for both you and me. We were happy here as children. You could be happy here again.” 

He knew what his brother thought. That he was a recluse, and that it would be better for him to come back here, where Guglielmo could keep an eye on him and keep him company. Perhaps he thought that the reason Francesco couldn’t come back before was because of Jacopo’s presence, and with Jacopo out of the scene, he would be free to return. That was part of it, but the other part of it was that Florence still held too many unresolved memories that he had not the courage to confront. 

But Guglielmo was right too. He didn’t dislike Florence at all. How could he, when so many years gone from the city, sometimes he still woke up half expecting to hear the chimes of Giotto’s bell tower? When every spring he still flung open the windows, expecting to smell the sweet scent of the blossoming wisteria? No, he missed it fiercely. Didn’t know how to stop missing it, God knows he’d tried. 

The hotel staff had cleaned the room in his absence, and he found the sterility familiar, mainly because it reminded him of his apartment back in Rome. In his lonelier moments, he’d thought of perhaps adopting a cat from the local shelter, but when common sense returned, he realized that he already wasn’t doing such a bang-up job of taking care of himself, and it wouldn’t do to subject a poor cat to that sort of thing either. 

He missed his careful routine - here, he felt rather like a floundering fish out of water. 

He showered, even though he hadn’t done much of anything that day, and went to bed, hair still damp. 

That night, he dreamed of his mother and father for the first time in a long time.

It was a childhood memory, rather, of that wondrous day when he was six years old, barely a year away from disaster and completely unknowing of it. Guglielmo had been at a friend’s house, and it had been just him, his mother and father, for that whole golden day. They’d taken a train out to a nearby lake, and on its sandy shores, his mother had spread out a red checkered picnic blanket and laid out a feast fit for a king. 

He’d spent the afternoon playing in the cool waters with his father, diving in and out of the rippling waves, and then alternately dozing in the glorious summer heat under the shade of an umbrella with his mother, sun drunk. They’d built sand castles and his parents had looked over him indulgently as he ran around, searching for buried treasure, calling his name, “Francesco, Francesco!” whenever he got too far away. As the sun went down, that gorgeous sunset that turned the sky a kaleidoscope of reds, oranges and pinks, and the sand beneath his toes to gilt and gold, he’d sat right in between his mother and father, looking at the lights in the distance, across the lake, blink on, like little stars in the growing darkness. 

By the time they’d gotten on the train to get back home, he’d been exhausted by the day, and his father had carried him home, half-asleep. Sandy and still smelling faintly of sun cream, the bridge of his nose newly freckled from the sun, his father had brought him into his room, where his mother tucked him in, smelling of roses and vanilla. Francesco would never forget it. She’d leaned in, and pressed kisses onto his cheek, her long gold earrings brushing his nose, while his father curved a large hand around his rumpled dark hair. “Francesco you are so, so loved,” she had said. “You are our son, and you are so loved. Never forget that.” 

He woke up at five in the morning, his face wet with tears. Alone in that dark hotel room in the middle of the city that should’ve still been his home, he cried his heart out, although if pressed, he couldn’t quite say why. But deep down, he knew what it was; it was the memory of being loved that had broken him down, that visceral feeling of being held and cherished for once in his lifetime. 

There was no way he was getting back to sleep after that, and so he lay in bed, still exhausted, thinking of everything and nothing at the same time, waiting for the sun to rise so that he could continue living his miserable, solitary existence. It was almost too depressing to bear thinking about.

\--

He was not sad. Not really, or at least, not just. He was more overwhelmed. At least, that’s what he thought he was feeling. Sitting in church, listening to the priest drone on, giving the funeral mass, Francesco couldn’t really tell. 

The announcement had run in the local paper and then circulated online, a few days ago, that Jacopo had died. It was nothing more than a short paragraph, barely longer than the width of a thumbnail, with date of birth and then death, and then his remaining family. Francesco had been petty enough to make sure that both he and Guglielmo were listed. If Guglielmo wasn’t a Pazzi, then neither was he. And - the added benefit was that it would have made Jacopo furious. Luchino had phoned to ask if there was any sort of obituary Francesco had wanted to write, and Francesco had told Luchino point blank that nobody would like the sort of obituary that Francesco wanted to write about his bastard of an uncle, and that had been that. It wasn’t like anyone who was in the know didn’t know that his uncle was a total bastard anyways. There was no need to pretend otherwise.

He imagined writing his own headline for the papers: _ Manipulative piece of shit finally gets what’s coming to him! Nephews thrilled. More on page 9. _ Involuntarily, the corner of his lips half-quirked up a little bit in amusement. Then he felt shame, hot at the back of his neck, at his own insensitivity and inability to forgive even a dead man, he looked back down and schooled his features into a scowl. 

He was in a suit, and it was still hot as hell. He tugged at the half-Windsor knot that his tie made at the hollow of his throat. Wondered if he had tied it too tight or if he were feeling choked for different reasons altogether. Stared down at his dress shoes and willed himself not to get lightheaded. He wasn’t grieving, and he didn’t mourn the bastard, exactly. Anger was in there somewhere, that Jacopo had not only fucked up his entire childhood, but was continuing to fuck up his entire adulthood by saddling him with the Pazzi bank, and all the trappings that came with it. And somewhere in the back of his mind, was the incessant ringing of: _ What the fuck am I going to do? _Over and over and over. 

Yes, he thought listlessly. Given the circumstances, he couldn’t really be blamed for his numbness and general outwards apathy towards the whole situation. 

Anyways, it was only him, Guglielmo, and Bianca in the church, sitting in the first pew, staring at the closed black casket that presumably housed Jacopo’s corpse. The funeral director had posited that it was traditional for the casket to be remain open, for a final viewing, but Francesco had flat out refused, and really, there was no one there to argue with him about it. 

When he’d first seen Bianca, walking in with Guglielmo for the funeral service, beautiful and solemn in her black dress, she’d thrown her arms around him and hugged him, hard enough to make his joints crack. It had made tears rise up in his eyes, unbidden, at the truly unexpected affection, and he’d blinked them away, but not fast enough, and so she’d seen them. She’d gotten that fierce, protective look that mothers get over their children, and she’d told him that anything he’d needed, he should come to her. He wondered briefly what Guglielmo had told her - about him, about their past, about living with Jacopo. Wondered if she thought her tears were over the bastard, or if she knew enough to guess the real reason behind his tears.

The mass was drawing to a close, and several people that the funeral home had hired on to carry the casket emerged from the back of the church to take the casket a little ways away, to the cemetery near the church where generations upon generations of Pazzis had been laid to rest. The three of them stood as well, and made their way somberly out of the church behind the pallbearers. 

They stood above the grave site, and Francesco watched as the casket was lowered deep into the earth, disappearing from sight, and the priest delivered the last rites. Inexplicably, he shuddered a little, even though it was still warm at sunset, and Guglielmo dropped his wife’s hand to wrap an arm around his shoulder. 

It was over, and Francesco still felt little to no resolution. 

\--

After the funeral had ended, they stood for a long time, the three of them, at the gate of the cemetery, until the sun had almost dropped completely out of view and it was beginning to get dark. Bianca and Guglielmo spoke about him in hushed, concerned whispers, as if he couldn’t clearly hear them, even though he was but a few feet away from them. Francesco might have found it almost offensive, but he supposed it was understandable, given how in shock he still felt and probably looked. And - it was difficult to summon up enough energy to care about anything.

He thought about his apartment back in Rome, and while he didn’t miss it exactly, being here in Florence was exactly what he had been afraid of. He was too close to all the roots and sources of his heartbreak. 

“Should he be alone right now?”

“I don’t know.” 

His brother’s hand on his shoulder. “Ciccio? Would you like me to stay with you at the palazzo tonight?”

“Oh,” said Francesco, a little distantly. He was processing the conversation like he was an outsider to it, and he felt himself speaking, rather than as if he himself had initiated the action. “No, no I-” he cleared his throat. “I’m not staying at Palazzo Pazzi. I’m in a hotel.” 

“Francesco!” Guglielmo exclaimed, aghast.

“I couldn’t-” Francesco looked up, unable to finish the sentence, the reason, voice growing thick in his throat, eyes begging his brother to understand. Guglielmo did, of course he did, and his eyes grew softer yet, and he tugged a slightly resisting Francesco into a gentle embrace. Francesco put his forehead on his brother’s shoulder and huffed out a breath, but he could not let go of the tightly coiled tension in his body, otherwise he knew he would fall apart, just like that. 

Bianca put her steady hand on his shoulder, and he turned to look at her. “This won’t do,” she said, and her gaze brooked no argument. “You are to stay with us in our home, in Palazzo Medici. There is more than enough room, and you need to be around people right now.” 

“Your brother won’t mind?” Francesco asked, and he tried to inject some derision into his voice, but he was so, so tired, and it came out soft and hesitant instead. He could see it now, playing through his head, his childhood best friend, that magnificent, golden haloed boy, who he himself, had rejected cruelly on orders from Jacopo that last time they had really spoken to each other. How foolish he had been. But back then, he had been foolish about a great many things.

“Lorenzo - and Giuliano - will have to deal with it,” Bianca said firmly, with the gravitas of one who knew her order should be obeyed or else, and it was this assertiveness that made Francesco weak with relief, and offered him a measure of calm like a sweet balm to the soul. Her face grew gentle as she looked at him in the eyes, deep blue boring into deep brown - she was a tall woman, and Francesco not a very tall man, so they were practically the same height - and he felt like she could see right through his toppling facades, his thin veneer of composure, right into his anguish and pain. “We’re family, Francesco.” 


	2. September // October

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter really ran away from me in terms of length. I’ve never written anything this long before (even though it’s not even that long), so I am a little nervous about how it might have turned out, and I'm truly sorry again for any mistakes you'll probably find. This chapter is going to be the longest one, and the next/last chapter will be a lot of resolution and tying up loose ends. I'm headed back to school at the end of this month, so the next update might be a bit longer in coming, but hopefully in any case, I'll get it out soon. Thank you again to everyone who’s been reading!
> 
> Disclaimer: (Still don’t know shit about banking, especially in Italy, nor inheritance laws in general, so please forgive me for the gleeful butchering of both concepts.)

It had been some number of years since Francesco had set foot in the Medici household. Nineteen years, to be exact.

As a general rule, he preferred to not think about the last time he had been here, because as far as childhood memories went, it was a particular lowlight. That was saying something, considering the veritable treasure trove of traumatic childhood memories he was hoarding. But he’d spent some truly happy times here after all, and when he let himself go far enough as to sift through the earliest memories he had of the place, it was with bittersweetness that he remembered this happiness.

It was a pretty swank place, as far as homes went, it went without saying. It was grandiose and opulent, and yet, not without feeling. The walls were frescoed with priceless murals, and countless paintings, commissioned by Medici ancestors of the past, adorned every perfect, gilt-edged room. But perched between those framed paintings were photographs, candid and raw, of the current members of the Medici family. There was Lorenzo, holding his university diploma and laughing, alongside his smiling mother and father. There was Giuliano, face caught mid-yell, holding up a trophy he’d won at a football tournament, triumphant and jubilant. And then Bianca, tall and impassioned, behind a debate podium, hands alive and in motion. An older picture of Lucrezia and Piero de’ Medici, sitting on a beach and kissing, caught on slightly overexposed film grain. Hundreds of baby pictures, family gatherings, wedding pictures - a history of living and feeling, captured and spread out across the walls. It was a story of a happy family, a real family, and it was this that brought a sense of warmth into the palazzo, and breathed life and sentience into its expanse of carved pillars, oriental rugs and towering archways, redolent of antiquity. 

In every other room, the windows were flung wide open, and the sound of people, the heady summer scent of the lemon trees in the orchard, and beams of sunlight chased all shadows away. 

Francesco was used to opulence, having grown up around it, but he had never before been in a place where art and humanity found such pure communion.

The room in which he was staying in was similarly warm and gorgeous. The walls were painted a soft eggshell blue that bled up into a ceiling that was frescoed with soft clouds. When Francesco lay back on the bed, he could imagine that he was floating on air, aloft, insignificant, and at peace. From the window that opened out, overlooking the courtyard, he could hear birdsong, the quiet running of water from the fountain. He’d never been here before, which meant that there were no memories for him to suppress. It was a perfect, blank slate, and Francesco reveled in it. It offered him quietness of mind, a sense of wide, open horizons - the clarity of being in the eye of a storm. In this moment, that was everything. 

Of course he hadn’t noticed all of this the first night he had stumbled in, shown in by Bianca and Guglielmo. He’d gone directly to sleep, still trembling from the exertion of holding himself so tightly during the funeral. No, it had been the next few days that had allowed him to take in his new surroundings and reframe his childhood memories of the place in a new focus.

This was the staircase banister that he and Lorenzo had slid down, to the constant admonishment from their mothers. This was the orange tree that he and Lorenzo had eaten from, faces and hands sticky with juice, backs of their necks hot with the prickle of high summer sun. This was the place he had once felt was as much of a second home to him as any place could get. 

This was Lorenzo’s mother, Lucrezia de’ Medici, née Tornabuoni, the woman who’d once treated him like another son.

Doubtless, Lorenzo had told them all about what had happened the last time they had met, told them of Francesco’s youthful cruelty and folly. But when he had stumbled forth to apologize, fumbling and shaking, but sincere, she had held him firmly by the shoulders before drawing him into a hug, still as strong and kind as he had remembered, although older and more weary, judging by the look of the lines on her face. She had lost her husband in these years, he remembered. But some of the lines were deep smile lines, and so she had beheld great happiness too. She told him that she was not in the business of judging him for youthful past mistakes and that he was welcome in their home and expected to join them for dinner every night that he could. 

“Thank you,” Francesco had said quietly, bowing his head at the mercy. He had not expected it, and he did not think he was worthy of it. 

Lucrezia looked at him with infinite sadness, as if she was remembering the mischievous boy who had once tripped through the gardens with her own son, joyful and innocent, before the world had beaten him down. She looked like she wanted to say something, but instead, she drew him into another motherly hug that he could not quite let himself fall into, lest he never get back up, and then briskly told him that he was much too thin, and that they would work on reversing it in short order.

When was the last time someone had cared for him like this? It should have comforted him, but instead it hurt too, the knowledge that this couldn’t last, that any comfort was both transient and fleeting. It made him feel angry and raw inside, like an old gaping wound had reopened, stitches torn. He’d been fine in Rome, he thought miserably. He’d been just fine without these reminders that life could be different. Had once been, different.

Giuliano was the harder sell.

Francesco did not exactly remember Giuliano too well, as Giuliano had only been a chubby, needy, toddler with a shock of blond hair when he and Lorenzo were seven and pretending to be grown-up, with no time for babies. It appeared, however, that Giuliano did not share his mother and Bianca’s forgiving disposition, and that he was rather harboring a grudge on behalf of his brother. Francesco could not fault him for his loyalty, and neither did he think Giuliano was in the wrong for expecting the worst of him, when he had only ever known that of Francesco.

“Tell me that isn’t who I think it is,” Giuliano said, when he walked in through the front door and into the courtyard before dinner on the first day. Guglielmo had told Francesco that Giuliano was working at the Medici bank as well, now that he had graduated from university, although only part time, and mainly to appease his mother.

“Francesco, this is my brother, Giuliano,” Bianca said, refusing to let Giuliano cow her. Francesco was beginning to suspect that she had never once before been cowed by anyone, least of all her littlest brother, and was struck with a rush of admiration.

“What the fuck is he doing here? Doesn’t he have his own fucking house?” Giuliano said aggressively, not taking his eyes away from Francesco even as he addressed Bianca. It was as if he was expecting that Francesco was going to do something terrible, like insult the entire Medici lineage in one go from where he was sitting, reading quietly on the chaise lounge. (Or rather, doing a good impression of reading. He’d been unable to focus on the words swimming before his eyes, and he’d spent the last half-hour reading the same page over and over, trying to comprehend it and failing.)

“He’s my brother-in-law, and he’s a guest here while he sorts out some affairs in Florence,” Bianca said, eyebrows raised, arms akimbo, like she was daring Giuliano to argue with her.

“He’s _ staying _ here?” Giuliano said, outraged, beginning to look truly apoplectic. He was still very blond, even all grown up, Francesco thought, and very unlike Bianca both in coloring and bearing, although both of them had seemingly retained that stubbornness, loyalty, and strength of will from their mother. From the way he carried himself, all broad bravado, Francesco could surmise that he was quick to anger, but not altogether unreasonable. 

“It’s all right,” Francesco interjected, before Bianca could physically incapacitate her brother. He got to his feet, setting his book down. “I need to apologize for what I said and did to your brother when we were younger. It was terrible and unacceptable of me, and I make no excuses for how I acted then, except to say that I have truly regretted it since then, and will do whatever I can to make amends. Bianca was kind enough to offer to let stay here, but if you wish it, I’ll leave.” He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes tiredly, and waited for judgement.

Giuliano stared at him, mouth slightly agape, his anger temporarily halted in its tracks, as if he had expected Francesco to fly into a rage. Given what Giuliano knew about him, Francesco supposed it was not too far a leap to make. But he had long outgrown his childhood fury and wild arrogance - or at least, he hoped he had. 

Toothless, Jacopo would have said. Too tired, is what Francesco had come up with in lieu of that.

He must have made a truly pathetic picture, or passed some sort of invisible test, because Giuliano relented after a long moment. “You might as well use up one of the guest rooms,” he allowed, grudgingly, eyes still narrowed a little suspiciously. “The place is too damn big anyways.”

Bianca shook her head in mild despair while Francesco managed not to laugh at Giuliano’s terrible attempt at hospitality because he was sure it wouldn’t go over well, and thanked him solemnly. It was amazing how one moment he was too tired to say anything, and the next moment he was struck by sudden amusement. The constant jawing back and forth between emotional extremes was enough to make him think he was actually going mad.

All in all, it could have been much worse, although he had yet to face Lorenzo himself. Bianca had told him perfunctorily that Lorenzo was on a business trip, though that was it, so Francesco had no idea of when to expect to see him back. This meant essentially that he had no idea when to brace for another confrontation - likely the most painful yet. 

Although Francesco had hardly kept tabs on Lorenzo in the interim years, he knew vaguely - through Guglielmo mainly - that after Piero de’ Medici’s death a couple years ago, Lorenzo had willingly taken up the mantle of Medici bank president, right out of business school. It was the kind of thing that Francesco himself would be expected to do now, although he was unwilling, and the thought of it made him want to do something drastic, like buy a one way plane ticket to any secluded forest in the middle of nowhere and live in a yurt for the rest of his sad life. 

He was exaggerating, but just barely.

Guglielmo came in through the front door in short order, and they all went to meet Lucrezia in the dining room for dinner.

As with the rest of the house, Francesco hadn’t been in the dining room since he was seven, but there was nothing about it that had changed, really. It was all the same - the smooth gleaming dining table of dark wood, the polished three tiered chandelier that hung from the ceiling, the cherry blossoms painted on pale green walls, and the big glass French doors that swung open into the courtyard. When he was younger, he had stayed over many a time for dinner - whether it was because he had played late into the evening with Lorenzo, or his parents had come over to talk with Lucrezia and Piero. Yes, this was a room he knew and remembered well. 

As dinner was served, Francesco kept quiet and studied the family dynamic carefully. Dinner was a loud and boisterous affair, replete with arguing, good natured bantering, and inanity. It spoke volumes of the close bonds and comfort they all felt with one another. He watched as Lucrezia passed Giuliano the pepper without him having to say anything, after cuffing him on the head for being cheeky, and later on, Guglielmo touched Bianca’s hand, which was resting on the table beside him, and then smiled at her when she looked at him, for no good reason other than to let her know that he was there. It made his heart ache, to think of the last time he’d had that sort of easy and ready comfort or rapport with anyone else, and to see this visual representation of what he had been missing.

It was very different from the atmosphere that had existed at Palazzo Pazzi, which had been complex to navigate and often overly formal. Jacopo had pretty much ignored him at the dinner table, particularly whenever he was conducting official business with his cronies, and then abruptly, whenever it was convenient for him, he might lash out. It was an airless existence that had sent Francesco scuttling back to his room as soon as he could after meals, hoping that Jacopo wouldn’t intercept him, or catch him whilst in a fit of rage.

He thought about what Jacopo might have to say if he saw them all together at this dining table - probably more vitriol about how the Medicis were evil and always had been. That had been one of his favorite topics, along with the tirade about how Medicis and Pazzis could never truly be friends, foaming at the mouth while he did so, all claims to the contrary falling on deaf ears. A memory arose, unbidden and unwelcome, of that time he had tried to stand up to Jacopo when he was fourteen, slowly beginning to realize that he was being manipulated and that he had sacrificed the best friendship he’d ever had in his entire life for what - the approval of a monster who couldn’t be satiated anyways? He’d tried to argue in favor of his brother’s right to love and be loved by Bianca, and Jacopo, drunk, already in high temper from a business deal gone wrong, and particularly violent because of it, had broken his arm for it.

When Francesco was eighteen and had left that environment of helplessness to forge himself a new life, he’d wanted to feel in control. Even if his routine was obsessive, it was one of his own making. He’d sworn he’d never find himself in such a position of vulnerability, where someone might make him feel so helpless ever again. And yet. Here he was again, feeling ten, thirteen, sixteen, all over again. Helpless and exposed.

Francesco looked down at his mostly untouched plate, and put down his fork, suddenly feeling not hungry anymore. How could he have appetite when such disturbances of the past, compounded into the present, roiled within him?

“Ciccio?” Guglielmo said in an undertone, touching his elbow. “What’s wrong?”

Francesco kept his eyes fixed bleakly on his plate as he shook his head, feeling very detached all of a sudden from the clink of china on the table and the rise and fall of voices that wove around him. The burden of helplessness that he’d laid down for a moment at the dining room door was rising up within him again. Nothing was the matter. Everything was the matter. He just couldn’t hack it, however hard he tried. 

He wasn’t in Palazzo Medici at the moment though. No, he was in Luchino’s office again. The current bane of his existence, the source of at least ninety percent of his woes. (This was only a rough estimate.)

“You’re aware of the contents of Jacopo Pazzi’s last will and testament, yes?”

“Not exactly,” Francesco said. He wished that Luchino would open up one of the windows in his office, because it was beginning to feel rather hard to breathe in there. “But I’m sure it’s not too complex.”

There was a stress ball on Luchino’s desk, but Francesco couldn’t imagine the man ever using it. He was never anything but perfectly unruffled.

“Well, the palazzo, the family fortune, and his assets - monetary and otherwise - will revert to you automatically, as sole beneficiary. That’s all in the official Pazzi account now. The personal accounts that your mother and father left are of course, still split evenly amongst you and your brother, nothing’s changed with that. There’s some official paperwork that’ll need to be filled out because it is a historic building, but given that the firm is the executor of the estate, we can do that for you. I’ll need you to sign these probate forms though, so the will can be authenticated. The Pazzi bank-” here Luchino hesitated, which was not a good sign, given how blandly and impersonally he approached everything.

Francesco waited mutely for the hammer to drop.

“There is currently a vacancy in the position of president of the Pazzi bank,” Luchino said very delicately. “As of the past week or so, the vice-president and the board of directors have been taking care of things. But I’m expecting that you’ll want to take up the presidency as soon as possible, and we’ll transition from there.”

It was nothing Francesco hadn’t expected, but even though he had braced for it, he found himself suddenly getting lightheaded at the blunt spelling out of his prospects and future, and he willed himself hard not to pass out in front of Luchino. 

Francesco made a noise of dissent, and tried to speak, but something twisted in his stomach - whether it was guilt, uncertainty, or fear, he could not discern - and when he opened his mouth, all that came out was a low, hoarse, sound. Luchino looked at him from where he was shuffling together several papers, brow furrowed, as if he couldn’t understand what the issue was. 

“Sorry, did you say something?”

“Well,” Francesco said, trying again, and his voice wavered a little bit, but he was helpless to stop it from doing so when he was surprised that his voice was working at all. “I’m not sure I’ll be taking up as president of the Pazzi bank. As of now. Anyway.”

Luchino’s shock was magnified by the fact that the man truly never did wear much, if any, expression on his face at all. “Not take up the presidency?” He said, incredulous. “The Pazzi bank has been run by your forefathers for centuries, and you _ are _ the only heir. Do you have something specific in mind?”

There were so many things Francesco was tempted to shout out, least of which was that he hadn’t asked for this. But wasn’t it his fault that he had shirked his duty as a Pazzi, and refused to continue on as a banker? Wasn’t it his fault that he had run from Jacopo instead of learning, all this time, how to carry on the legacy?

“If not you,” Luchino asked, in the deafening silence. “Who else?” 

This, like most things, Francesco had no answer to. 

He ceded some ground. “I’ll meet with the senior management first, before I decide what to do,” he said dully, because it seemed like the right thing to say. 

Francesco exhaled deeply, and stared out the window, as Luchino continued speaking, feeling very much like he was leading himself to execution, feeling very much like he was a proverbial bird in a cage - that was to say, trapped. 

Outside, the wind moved a low hanging tree branch, and it swayed, heavy with leaves that were beginning to turn faintly russet. 

\--

It was nearly eight by the time Francesco returned back to Palazzo Medici. It meant that he had half an hour to kill before Lucrezia expected him in the dining room for dinner, and while he thought about returning to his cloud-painted room for respite, he knew that once he returned to his room, he wouldn’t want to leave it again. 

It had been a full day. After meeting with Luchino in the morning, he had gone to the bank, and then been grilled within an inch of his life, by men he had mostly recognized as those who had used to gather around Jacopo’s table to plot when Francesco was a boy. It had been remarkably unhelpful in most regards, other than reaffirming the certainty that Francesco was going to be absolutely useless and also miserable as bank president, and left him no closer to finding a solution. It was not a particularly inspiring affirmation.

Instead, he went to the library. It seemed to him like no one in the house really utilized the space, so it was the perfect place to sit in quiet - an enormous swooping room, as elegantly decorated and furnished as the rest, but filled, from floor to ceiling, with beautifully kept and preserved books. Most places of grandiosity left Francesco unmoved, but libraries were one of the few sacrosanct spaces that Francesco had found still thrilled his heart. There, surrounded by tomes and tomes of books, Francesco felt comforted and at peace.

He refused to think any more about the day if he could help it, and so he kept his mind carefully blank, aided by general exhaustion and impending headache. He sat on one of the couches in front of the unlit fireplace, and stared at the carpet underneath his feet. It was remarkably escapist of him, and he rather thought that if he ever made it to therapy, it would probably be one of the first things a therapist might pick up about him. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to care much. 

Slowly though, his mind drifted, as it was wont to do, and he thought of the last time he had seen Lorenzo. He remembered, with some amusement, that it had been at Guglielmo’s wedding, five years ago. He’d stuck closely to his brother for most of the ceremony, and when his brother was naturally unavailable, he kept to himself, avoiding most other company. It wasn’t particularly like he had known anyone there anyways, and he’d hardly thought the immediate Medici family would welcome his dour companionship. 

He’d been sitting alone during the reception, nursing a glass of sparkling wine, when he’d spotted Lorenzo. The band was playing, and couples whirled away on the dance floor in the dusk, lit by a thousand little lights. It wasn’t exactly hard to miss him, given how tall the other man was, but his conspicuousness was further compounded by the fact that he was making out furiously with a dark haired woman on the edge of the dance floor, with a hand halfway up the skirt of her dress, doing God knows what. It was wildly inappropriate and flagrant, and also nothing Francesco hadn’t seen before, even in his limited experience with university parties, but it had still made him laugh a little anyways, especially when Lorenzo’s mother had bustled over and hit him over the head with a rolled up wedding programme, and told him to learn some decorum.

There was the sound of door handles being turned and then the heavy doors of the library swung open with a whoosh. Francesco startled, and looked up from where he’d been lost in reverie, brought back into the sphere of the present.

_ Speak of the devil, and he shall appear_, was his first thought. 

It was Lorenzo. Who else could it have been? They gawked at each other for a long surprised moment.

“Francesco.”

“Lorenzo.”

Then they stared at each other some more, but it was awkward this time, and a thick tension hummed between them - not antagonistic necessarily, but fraught with uncertainty, and Francesco knew that they were both remembering all too well the last time they had spoken. Francesco fought the irrational urge to hide his face.

Lorenzo had grown up very well. He’d always been a handsome boy, one that mothers and grandmothers cooed and clucked over, and predicted his future as a heartbreaker. Now he was a handsome man, tall and broad shouldered, with dark hair, deep blue eyes, a firm, masculine jawline, and strong, noble, features. He carried himself with an almost overwhelming vitality and intensity, woven inextricably into his skin and bearing. But there was an intrinsic kindness to him too, set into his very features - in the warmth in his eyes, the softness of his mouth. What was that his mother had once said? Lorenzo was like the sun, and Francesco had once been one of those lucky stars caught in his orbit. 

“I didn’t realize I was intruding,” Francesco said quickly. His heart was pounding. “I can leave if you wish.”

“No, no of course not,” Lorenzo said, recovering admirably, moving into the room with an easy athleticism and grace that Francesco envied. His hair was damp and curled around the nape of his neck. “I’d only come to drop off some papers before dinner. Bianca told me you were staying here while you take care of things in Florence. You’re welcome here.”

“Thank you.” Another second of silence. Francesco braced himself and stood. “Lorenzo, I want to apologize to you for what I said to you all those years ago. When you came to offer me your friendship and kindness and I turned you away cruelly. I can only look back and regret everything I did that day, and how I threw our friendship out the window. I was such a fool. If there is anything that I can do to make amends, please allow me to.”

“There’s no need to apologize,” Lorenzo said immediately, because he was kind and good, even after what Francesco had done, but the set of his shoulders looked less tense than they had before. “It was a long time ago, and I know it was hard for you then too. It’s all forgiven.” 

He smiled at Francesco, and offered his hand to shake.

This time, Francesco took it.

\--

Lorenzo wasn’t quite sure what to think. 

He’d come home after nearly two weeks away, anticipating a warm welcome, a hot meal, and his own comfortable bed, in that order, and not thinking of much else. 

Well - he _ had _ been thinking absently about the cryptic text Giuliano had sent him a couple of days ago, which consisted of three exclamation points. When he’d asked Giuliano to elaborate, Giuliano had just sent back a throwing up emoji, which was remarkably unhelpful, but he’d sort of come to expect that sort of thing from his younger brother.

Bianca had come out to meet him, as she always did if she were able, and after hugging him and asking him if he was well, she said, very bluntly, without easing into it whatsoever (although in retrospect, Lorenzo supposed that there was nothing she could really have said to ease into it), “Francesco Pazzi is staying here while he’s in Florence.”

It wasn’t like Lorenzo hadn’t known that Jacopo Pazzi had passed - it had been announced, about a week prior, and as Medici bank president, it was sort of his job to know these things. But still, it was quite a shock. “What? _ Who_?” he managed to garble out, not very intelligently, sure he had misheard Bianca somehow. 

“Yes,” his sister replied, fierce. “I know you have your past differences, but he is my guest, and my family by marriage, and you had better treat him with respect.”

“Jesus, Bianca,” Lorenzo said, stung. “Of course I will. You think I wouldn’t?”

Bianca softened. “I’m sorry Lorenzo. I know you wouldn’t treat him badly, but I had to make sure.” 

Lorenzo could not fault her for her kind heartedness, and he’d forgiven her instantly. “No matter, Bianca,” he reassured her, as cheerily as he could muster, given that he might still be in shock. 

At least now he knew what Giuliano had meant by his messages.

“I’ll go freshen up now, and then I’ll see you at dinner,” he said, kissing her cheek and making his escape.

He’d had the time, so he’d gotten into the shower to rinse off all the dirt from a full day of traveling and then walking back home through the crowded and sweaty streets.

Francesco Pazzi. Now that was a name he hadn’t thought of in many years. 

The memory of how they had parted was not pleasant to remember. Lorenzo had come to him, full of childish hope, arms open, expecting nothing to be different, and had gone away, incandescently furious, but mostly brokenhearted and hurt, especially after the fury had passed. 

It had been a long time ago though, and numerous other people and places had passed between then and now. The passage of time smoothed even the bitterest of memories, after all. Francesco had thusly remained a shadowy figure, lost to the time of early childhood memory, a wisp of a dark haired boy with mercurial eyes. But here he was now, back in hallowed halls, as if resurrected from memory into the flesh.

After his shower, it had still been a little too early to head down to dinner. The library was on the way to the dining room, and so he had retrieved some papers from his briefcase to put on his desk there.

There in the library was where he’d run into Francesco. Although Lorenzo hadn’t expected it, the heartfelt apology that he’d been given had gone a ways in mending and easing that long held rift that had existed between them. 

When he had extended his hand to Francesco, and Francesco had taken it, Lorenzo had felt like it was an old wrong being set right.

Grown up, Francesco did not bear much resemblance to the boy he had been, although there was enough similarity in the features that he was just recognizable. He’d grown up to be striking, and Lorenzo was nothing if not a great appreciator of beauty. It was an impenetrable, angular, beauty, that characterized the finely wrought face. Dark hair, soft and wavy, fell loosely into that face, softening the high cheekbones and intense eyes a tick.

But it was his mannerisms and his bearing that rendered Francesco almost unrecognizable from his boyhood self. There was a brittle, fragile quality to him now, present in the barely perceptible trembling of his mouth when he’d delivered the apology, in the weary slump of shoulders, and again in the heaviness and sadness of his eyes, which gave away nothing and everything at the same time. 

He was a mystery, this new Francesco.

Now, at dinner, Lorenzo was doing his level best to not stare at Francesco, who had retreated further into himself, as they had entered the dining room, which was as loud and cheery as ever. There was a polite sort of absent blankness on his face, like he was silently removing himself or holding himself apart from the gaiety of the room. He was slender by nature, but the way he curled inwards on himself, like he was used to hiding from the world, made him seem even smaller. _ What happened to you? _ Lorenzo wondered, although this was not exactly a question he could or should voice.

“Where were you again?” His mother was speaking to him. Lorenzo tore his gaze away from Francesco, where it had been unconsciously drawn to again, annoyed with himself. Francesco hadn’t looked at him at all, his gaze still politely frozen straight ahead or on his food, but Guglielmo was looking at him thoughtfully now, having followed his eyeline.

“In Milan, Mamma,” he said, spooning up some of his soup. It was delicious, and he had sorely missed the food at home whilst he had been away.

“Milan, you say,” she said, sounding speculative, and Lorenzo winced at his mistake, but it was too late.

“Mamma-”

“Did you see Lucrezia Donati there by any chance?”

There it was. Giuliano spat out his mouthful of soup in laughter, and Lorenzo glared at his younger brother. “No,” he said testily. “She and I haven’t been in touch for well over a year.”

“There’s no need to get touchy, Lorenzo,” his mother said, swirling around the wine in her glass absently. “You haven’t spoken about anyone in awhile. I only wanted to know if you had anyone special in your life.”

“I don’t.”

“For once,” Bianca coughed in undertone, and she, Guglielmo, and Giuliano snickered under their breaths (which was very hypocritical of his younger brother), and Lorenzo looked over at them, thoroughly betrayed. 

Francesco still hadn’t looked up from his plate throughout this entire exchange, but he had his head cocked to the side and was listening thoughtfully.

“All right,” his mother said equably, and switched subjects to another unwilling target. “Francesco, I heard from Guglielmo that you’re a historian now?”

At this, Francesco did look up. “I am,” he said. “I study Renaissance history in Rome at the Sapienza University.”

Giuliano snorted, and Lucrezia took her napkin and whapped him across the face with it. 

Lorenzo was intrigued though. Somehow, he hadn’t expected that Francesco had gone in such a completely opposite direction from banking, although doubtless he had, because otherwise he’d have been working with Jacopo these past few years, and Lorenzo would’ve known it. It was just another tantalizing puzzle piece in the conundrum that was starting to form his old childhood friend.

“That sounds wonderful - I’ve always loved history myself, and we have such a richness of history here in Italy. How do you like Rome?”

“It’s all right. I’ve been there for over five years, and so I’m quite used to it,” Francesco said. “Although - it’s no Florence.” His tone was strangely bittersweet, soft with a yearning. 

He turned his face to the side, and his eyes met Lorenzo’s. For an instant, Lorenzo could see the image of young Francesco, the happy boy he had once been, as clear as a photograph - laughing at the dinner table, a twig twisted in his messy hair from where they’d been climbing trees all afternoon. Then, as quickly as it had come, the quicksilver flash of memory dissipated, and the vapor of present reality rolled between them once more.

Francesco looked away, and despite Lorenzo’s best attempts to catch his eye again, he did not look at him again for the rest of the dinner.

\--

After dinner, Lorenzo went looking for Francesco, hoping that the other man hadn’t absconded to his room for the night already. He didn’t know how to explain it, but he felt a strange magnetic pull towards Francesco - an acute desire to know who he had become, nearly two decades on from the end of their childhood friendship.

He was in luck - he found Francesco in the library again. 

“Lorenzo,” Francesco said, arching an eyebrow up. He put his book down, and Lorenzo noticed immediately that he was wearing glasses now - square ones with thin rims. He was brutally attractive like this, Lorenzo had to admit. “Something I can do for you?”

“No, nothing like that,” Lorenzo admitted. “I wanted to-” he hesitated. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“About?”

“Um,” Lorenzo said, looking around desperately for something to say. “I’m assuming you’re taking over the Pazzi bank now?”

Francesco looked at him with those heavy dark brown eyes and said nothing. Lorenzo noticed that there were a few fine freckles that dotted the upper curve of his cheekbones, underneath the outer corners of his eyes. They were very distracting, although Lorenzo didn’t quite know why. 

“Oh shit,” Lorenzo said, mentally kicking himself and hastily backtracking, thinking that maybe it was inappropriate after all, for the president of a rival bank to be asking questions like that. “I’m sorry if that was insensitive or prying or-”

“It wasn’t,” Francesco said, putting Lorenzo out of his misery. “But, I’m not sure right now. I don’t really have any banking experience. I’m a historian. So you can see that that might be an issue.” He laughed humorlessly, a dry, brittle sound. “The problems of an inheritance versus meritocracy.”

Thankful for the bone that he was being thrown, Lorenzo sat down on the couch next to him and tried to sound encouraging. “If the problem is inexperience, I’m sure that with time and some help from your advisers and senior staff, you’ll figure it out quickly. I mean, when I began, I was-”

“No,” Francesco said. “The problem is that I despise banking and being in positions of authority.”

Lorenzo laughed before he could stop himself, but before he could be thoroughly horrified at himself, he saw a small smile spread across Francesco’s face, deeply morose until now. It transformed his face - made him seem less inaccessible, and more open. Properly encouraged now, Lorenzo replied, “Banking is not the most cutting-edge of fields, I will admit-”

“So you admit it!” Francesco said, jokingly accusatory, smirking a little bit, and then Lorenzo felt compelled to defend his career, which he did quite enjoy after all, and they went on in a humorous argument about the pros and cons of banking as a career choice, and the pros and cons of being in charge.

When the conversation reached a lull, Lorenzo took the opportunity to offer his condolences for Jacopo’s death, mainly because he felt like it was the right thing to do. And although he had not liked Jacopo in the least, if Francesco grieved him, it was well within his right to do so.

“Please don’t,” Francesco said, cutting him off with a shake of his head, and Lorenzo wondered at that too. It was apparent that Francesco had no love lost for his late uncle, and the fact that he had taken up residence here, where it could not have been comfortable for him to return, rather than stay in Palazzo Pazzi, spoke volumes. “I don’t mourn him, and I suspect no one else does either.” 

Lorenzo could not disagree. He had known Jacopo too - not as Francesco had, but he could not honestly say that he would miss the man.

“I’m sorry too,” Francesco said awkwardly, and when Lorenzo looked at him, confused, he quickly clarified. “About the loss of your father. I know it was a few years ago, but I-” he paused. “I know what it’s like to lose parents. How hard it can be.” 

“Oh,” Lorenzo said, and he swallowed hard. He’d had some differences with his father, especially as he had grown older, but he had truly loved him, and even now, nearly three years from the initial passing, he found himself missing him - trying to remember him, and hoping that his memories of his father wouldn’t grow dim and forgotten over time. It hadn’t been the same as Francesco’s loss - that brutal accident that had taken both of his parents suddenly at a young age, without any chance of a last goodbye. They’d known about Piero’s disease for a long time, and had ample opportunities for last words and farewells. When Piero had gone, he’d had his mother, his brother, and sister around him to help carry the burden of grief. But it had been - and continued to be - hard, nonetheless. “Thank you.” 

“He was always incredibly kind to me.” Francesco said. He hesitated, but continued on. “I still remember when we were children, and those many nights after dinner, where he would tell us Greek and Roman myths, and about the history of Florence, and make us cups of hot chocolate. I was in awe of him, and how big and wonderful he made the world seem. I know it’s been a long time, but I’ve never forgotten it, nor him.”

It was exactly what Lorenzo had wanted or needed to hear, even if he had not known it himself until now; that someone else was there, missing and remembering his father, and that the memory of his father was not lost in the world. Of course he knew abstractly, that people (most obviously his siblings and his mother) did remember his father, but it was still extraordinarily comforting to hear it out loud. He closed his eyes, touched beyond words by the gesture.

“I’m sorry if I overstepped,” Francesco said. “I’m sincerely sorry if I did.”

“No,” Lorenzo said quickly. “Not at all. It was exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you. Truly.”

At this, Francesco colored a little, and he dipped his head, looking shy at the thanks. It was oddly captivating, that pink flush on his cheeks.

“This topic of conversation is rather depressing,” Lorenzo observed, which served to break the heaviness of the atmosphere that had thusly descended. “Shall we move on?”

Francesco looked up, laughing. “Sure.” 

“Tell me about your research. I’ve been intrigued since you talked about it earlier.”

Francesco looked at him consideringly, as if to gauge the honesty of his interest, and apparently satisfied, launched into a description of the nature of his work, the things he was currently researching or had researched, and what he hoped to achieve in the future (although, when he talked about the future, his face dimmed a little, as if he had little hope that these things might come to pass).

Lorenzo watched him lose that tension in his shoulders as he spoke, becoming more natural and at ease, and saw the warmth in his face as he talked about his work. He smiled when Lorenzo couldn’t help but laugh at some of the stories about grad student life, and it was striking. It was an incredible glimpse into who Francesco was underneath the distance he tried to put between everyone else and himself, and Lorenzo felt privileged to see it.

And then Lorenzo understood, watching Francesco’s face light up discussing his work, why he might be struggling so hard. It was obvious to anyone that Francesco loved his work, for all of his general mysterious unhappiness, and perhaps that was one cause of his unhappiness, the idea that he might have to leave what made him happy, to fulfill a duty.

The big grandfather clock struck midnight, and the chiming of bells startled them both. Lorenzo hadn’t realized they’d been talking for almost two hours, but then, they must have been.

“It’s late,” Lorenzo said, reluctantly, because he didn’t want this to be over yet. It was a ridiculous thought, because it wasn’t like Francesco was going away. 

“I think I’m going to head to bed.” Already, Francesco was drawing back in on himself, making himself smaller and less bright once more.

“I probably should too,” Lorenzo said. He wanted to reach out to tell Francesco how glad he was that they could speak again now that broken bridges had been mended, but he didn’t know how to say it without sounding like an idiot. “Thanks for the conversation. Good night, Francesco.”

“Thanks for listening,” Francesco said softly, and one side of his mouth had quirked up into a half-smile. “Good night.”

So, Lorenzo liked the grown-up Francesco, who loved carefully but deeply, who had a biting sense of humor to match his own, who was able to laugh at himself despite his seriousness, and who walked through the world as if he were trying to hide from it, but was hopeful nonetheless. Possibly more than he had ever liked young Francesco, and he had liked him quite a lot. 

Lorenzo sat for awhile, after Francesco had left, not sure exactly what to do with this realization. 

\--

A week later, Giuliano caught Lorenzo on his lunch break at the Medici bank, reading one of Francesco’s articles. 

“Really?” Giuliano said, sighing deeply. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Lorenzo.”

\--

The longer Francesco stayed at Palazzo Medici, the more he liked it. 

Over the past weeks, he’d grown quite fond of his room, and especially of the library, which he could spend hours in, if only he had the time. 

He’d grown quite fond of the people as well. Dinners with the family remained a source of amusement, and he found himself slowly being coaxed out of his shell more and more, alternately by Guglielmo, Lucrezia, Bianca, Lorenzo, and even Giuliano, albeit through the correspondence of insults. 

He and Giuliano would never be best friends - even if he and Lorenzo hadn’t fallen out as children. But the shots that Giuliano took at him were starting to feel quite a bit more amusing than mean-spirited these days, and on occasion, Francesco might even fire back. One might even call it the beginnings of camaraderie (if one were not Giuliano, nor Francesco, who would never admit to such a thing).

Somewhere along the way, he’d stopped thinking quite so rigidly of this - the mirage of a home, the affections of a family - as only temporary. It remained in the back of his mind, but almost unconsciously, he’d been tricked into letting himself grasp on to these transient comforts as if they were his to keep. This meant that it would hurt all the more when he inevitably had to leave, and yet he couldn’t stop himself.

He thought sometimes, especially in the warm glow of the dining hall, or in the serenity of the Medici library, that he might even be happy.

But in the dark of night, he would lie awake sometimes, feeling like his soul was being torn to shreds, thinking about Palazzo Pazzi, empty and slowly decaying. Abandoned. A mausoleum of memories. It inevitably led him again to think of the Pazzi bank, as if that wasn’t the problem that consumed nearly all of his waking thoughts and moments. He felt afraid, then guilty - more and more like a coward.

It didn’t help that he was spending far too much time with the vice president - Salviati - and the board of directors of the Pazzi bank. Francesco had met them all before as a boy, when they had clustered in Palazzo Pazzi with Jacopo to scheme, but now he _ knew _ them. They had all been handpicked by his uncle, and were cut from the same cloth, as greedy, cold-hearted, power-hungry people. They were all this and worse, and he had to convene with them day in and day out.

At these meetings, Francesco was struck by the distinct sense that he was being viewed as a puppet, someone a little hapless, who might be easy to control and manipulate. Francesco knew the signs of manipulation, and he could see them very clearly. And yet, what could he do about it? Who else could he talk to about the Pazzi bank? So, he masqueraded along like he was entertaining the possibility of taking on the Pazzi bank, even though he wasn’t at all, but he could not leave the bank in the hands of these people either, and neither was he prepared to abandon it, when he knew that it had once meant the world to his father, and to his ancestors as well. 

So the war raged on.

Aside from his general melancholy and struggle over the Pazzi bank and the old estate, there was another, less depressing, but rather more perplexing, new development that had cropped up.

“Guglielmo,” Francesco whispered furtively, eyes darting around and scanning the perimeter. They were in the courtyard after dinner, alone. For now. “Lorenzo keeps trying to talk to me.”

Guglielmo didn’t even bother looking up from his phone. “Points for perseverance, I guess,” he said at full volume, shrugging, and then grinning a little when Francesco yelped and then hushed him hastily.

“But why?” Francesco said, still in a whisper, genuinely bewildered.

“Maybe he just wants to be friends. What’s the big deal, Ciccio? If I remember correctly, he and you used to be super close, way back when.”

“That was years ago! Are _ you _ still friends with your childhood best friend?”

“Er...yes?”

“Well you are the exception to the case! You’re friends with everyone! And it’s just weird.”

“Is it so incredible,” Guglielmo said slowly. “To think that someone else might simply enjoy your company?” 

Francesco’s mouth snapped shut. “Was this question rhetorical?” he asked weakly, after a moment.

Guglielmo looked unhappy at this. “Your self-esteem is in shambles,” he remarked. “But as your older brother, I’m telling you that you are a person who is deserving of friendship and kindness, and the kind of person people would want to be friends with.” 

Francesco had no idea how to respond to this, but luckily - or perhaps not so luckily - he was saved from having to say anything.

“Francesco!”

Francesco jumped and spun around.

It was Lorenzo, of course, smiling like the sun, and Francesco felt a little weak-kneed with the full force of that grin focused and intent on him. It was a little bit horrific how much Francesco enjoyed it. Sometimes when Lorenzo looked at him like that, he was tempted to look behind him, or over his own shoulder, like Lorenzo might be smiling at someone else, and not him. “I was looking for you. I read your most recent article on Florentine banking in the 15th century, and I wanted to let you know that I thoroughly enjoyed it.”

Francesco was genuinely surprised. “You read it?”

“I do read, often,” Lorenzo said defensively.

“No,” Francesco said quickly, although he was torn between reassuring the man or expressing faux surprise that Lorenzo could read at all. 

He decided to go with the former. Lorenzo had done this for him, and the gesture made him feel warmed to the bone, and he didn’t want to let it go unacknowledged. “It’s just that basically no one besides other academics in my field read my articles. And even they sometimes don’t. They’re just too dry and detailed.” He was overcome with a sudden bashfulness that seemed to take ahold of him often whenever he was around Lorenzo these days. “So I was surprised, but I’m really flattered.”

“It was good,” Lorenzo insisted. “You’re an excellent writer and terribly witty too.”

“If only my supervisor thought as highly of my writing as you do,” Francesco quipped, because he had never known how to handle praise without deflecting. 

Lorenzo smiled at this, and without thinking, Francesco returned the smile. 

It was dark outside by now, but the numerous lamps that swung from the cloisters shone a soft, warm light over the entire expanse of courtyard, and the moment felt real and happy.

“Oh god,” Guglielmo muttered, from where he was still sitting, eyes darting between the two of them knowingly, like he had just confirmed something. Francesco had almost forgotten that he was there, even though he’d just been speaking with his brother moments ago. 

Guglielmo got up. “I’m leaving, I’m leaving. You two _ have fun_.”

\--

Contrary to popular belief, Lorenzo did not have it all sorted out.

He woke with a gasp, and was awake in an instant. 

Heart pounding, fumbling for his phone, he registered, from the sharp, pale light of the screen, that it was a little past three in the morning. Just a nightmare, he reminded himself forcibly. 

He’d had _ the _ nightmare - the same one that had haunted him occasionally for the past few years, but every time it happened, it remained affecting. There was no way to brace for it.

From past experience, Lorenzo knew that he was just as likely to lie in bed for the next four hours, until he had to get up for work, as he was to actually fall back asleep. Besides, he thought, with a sick sense of queasiness, he didn’t precisely fancy going back to sleep and slipping right back into that horrifying dream.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, and put his face in his hands, and scrubbed hard. _ Get it together_, he thought again, and tried to suppress the waves of horror that still rose and fell within him, the dream still fresh in his mind. 

The walls of his bedroom felt tight all of a sudden, and claustrophobic, even though Lorenzo typically had no problem with small spaces, and he stumbled from his bedroom, out into the hallway, and down the stairs, seeking the comforting clasp of fresh air. The marble of the floor was cool underneath his bare feet, and the house was silent in the night, where by day, sound, music, and laughter usually reigned. He ached, sudden and sharp, even though it was ludicrous, for those familiar sounds to chase away the terrors from the dreamscape, and to remind Lorenzo that all was well.

There was a light on in the kitchen.

Francesco looked up, when Lorenzo stumbled in and broke the stillness. He was sitting on the countertop, folded up with his cheek resting on his knees, staring out the window. He turned, startled, but then caught sight of Lorenzo’s face, and his usually impassive face opened up a little in understanding.

“I was about to make a hot drink. Do you want hot chocolate?” Francesco asked, gently, and Lorenzo nodded, throat still closed too tightly to speak. 

Francesco swung himself off the countertop to get the cups, and Lorenzo closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and listened to the sound of gentle clinking, metal on china, and drawers opening.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Francesco said, when he’d returned, setting a timer for when the hot chocolates would be ready. He sat next to Lorenzo, close but not touching.

Lorenzo said hoarsely, “Tell me why you’re awake first, please?” 

Francesco acquiesced. “Sometimes I can’t sleep,” His voice was smooth and soothing. “Maybe because I’m bothered by something, or thinking too hard to fall asleep. But aside from that, I like the night. It’s a time where nobody expects anything from you. Around you, the world is asleep, but you’re the only one awake. You’re surrounded by the world, and yet, not of it. It’s freeing.” The slow, rich tones of his voice were slowing Lorenzo’s racing heartbeat, and Lorenzo could feel something within himself untwist, and calm. 

“Do you ever feel-” Lorenzo stopped. He didn’t know how exactly to articulate what he was feeling in words, and he spoke haltingly. “My father and grandfather, and everyone that came before. They all scaled these enormous heights, and they achieved so much. It’s difficult to imagine living up to it, much less surpassing it. It’s worse to think that I might not be - that I might be letting down my father. We disagreed so often before he passed - sometimes I wonder what he thought of me. What he’d think of me now. I dreamed tonight that he was telling me that he was disappointed in me, that I had betrayed him, that he- he hated me, and then I was chasing something around for an eternity - my dream, maybe, and it was hopeless.” He spread his hands flat on the countertop. “Maybe it’s irrational. But I feel like I’m not doing enough, or that I’ll never achieve what I’ve set out to do, or scale the heights that I have my eyes set on. I have such big dreams and plans. To make not only the bank better, but Florence better. To use my influence to create positive change wherever I can.” Lorenzo felt a little self-conscious then. “I don’t know if that makes sense, sorry. I know it sounds stupid, or maybe arrogant.”

But Francesco was looking at him intently, head tilted a little bit, obviously listening and taking everything in. The collar of his too large white t shirt was slipping off one of his pale shoulders, made whiter by a shaft of moonlight, and he looked rumpled and lovely. “No,” he said slowly. “I don’t think it’s any of those things. It’s admirable. A little far fetched maybe, but if anyone could make it happen, it would be you.”

Lorenzo’s breath caught in his throat, humbled by the sheer strength of belief and certainty in Francesco’s eyes.

“You’re a good man, and you’ve got a good heart,” Francesco continued. “You’re generous, and forgiving to a fault, and you’re mostly self-aware. You’ll make many mistakes along the way, no doubt. But you have people around you that’ll call you on your bullshit. I know for a fact that Bianca will.” His lips curled upwards a little at this, and Lorenzo had to laugh. It was true. His sister was a lioness.

“Maybe you’re a little too idealistic and ambitious,” Francesco allowed. “But you come from a place of kindness and a real desire to foment change for the better. Not many people can say that. I definitely can’t. You’ve got a hell of a legacy behind you, I’ll give you that, but it’s what you do that’ll define you, not what they did.”

The timer beeped, and Francesco sprang up to get their cups of hot chocolate, and Lorenzo-

Lorenzo was struck by a clarion epiphany, so clear and unmistakable that it shook him to the core, that he was going to fall in love with Francesco, this beautiful man who believed in him and listened to him and laughed with him in the dim light of the kitchen in the quiet night. 

It was terrifying, and at the same time, easier than he had ever thought it might be.

\--

It seemed that something had shifted after that night in the kitchen. It was not the last middle of the night meeting that they had; it was only the first, but it had changed their relationship irrevocably in some way that Francesco couldn’t quite pinpoint. He’d never had a relationship like this before.

Francesco had been used to seeing Lorenzo a bit like a golden god, bright and handsome, and good in an untouchable way that Francesco couldn’t access at all. But that night had shown him another side of Lorenzo - a side that was still young, and lost sometimes, and a little vulnerable. He might have been a man born to lead, but he was also human. One who apparently trusted Francesco enough to spill his fears and dreams to him in the quiet spaces of night.

In the days and nights that came, they talked about things that mattered. They talked about things that didn’t matter.

God help him, Francesco liked the man - he liked him a lot. He’d never felt this way about anyone before, and it scared him, the depth of that feeling; of safety, belonging, and even happiness, that bloomed within him whenever he was around Lorenzo.

“I love how you talk,” Lorenzo told him one slow, gentle night. He had a way of speaking that inspired belief in even the most fervid of skeptics. “It’s thoughtful and profound and honest. I’ve never spoken to anyone like you.”

Francesco had held the memory of this close to his chest for the next few days.

\--

Francesco had always loved the stars.

He’d been born into it - when he was little, his mother had glued those glow in the dark star stickers on his bedroom ceiling, priceless antique ceiling be damned. His father had been something of an amateur astronomer, and had taken him out to observatories, even before he could fully comprehend the immediate world around him, and shown him the stars, and talked to him about space travel, and open universes, yet unexplored; that vast infinity of stars, and nebulas, and planets that lay somewhere, right above and beyond the world they lived in, waiting to be found. Francesco had been so young that it had been difficult to understand exactly what his father had been trying to impart to him, but what he had taken away was that sense of the infinite, and the beckoning friendliness of the stars.

After they had gone, and Francesco had first gone to live with Jacopo, and he’d been so lonely that he could die, he’d named some of the stars in the sky. By that, he meant that he called those familiar twinkling lights outside his window by name - not their official names by any stretch, but common ones. He’d pretend they were his friends. It was stupid, but it had gotten him through some truly dark and solitary nights, particularly locked out of his room, hurting and confused.

As he got older, it sometimes struck him that these were the same stars that his parents had once looked at and lived under, the same stars that the pioneers of modern astronomy had once observed, and the same stars that people all over the world might see. That too, comforted him.

Now here in Florence, some nights, he’d sit by a window, look out at the stars, and hope for a miracle.

\--

Lorenzo had worked late into the night, and when he’d come home, he’d expected all the lights to be off, and the house to be hushed in the reprieve of sleep. But when he’d entered the courtyard and looked up, there was a solitary light, still on, in the window that belonged to Francesco. 

Like a moth, drawn to the light, he’d gone to it, even though it was late.

“Francesco?” Lorenzo knocked on the door, which was standing slightly ajar. When there was no answer, he pushed it open a tack. Francesco was sitting by the window. He was still dressed as if he had also just come home from a meeting - wearing a button down, trousers, and long socks - but his tie lay on the floor, and he had one shoe off, and one shoe still on, like he’d started to get undressed, and then abruptly left it. He turned to look at Lorenzo, and then without saying anything, he turned his head back to where it had been before, and kept staring out the window.

“Bad day,” he said finally, and he sounded awful. 

Francesco carried unhappiness with him at all times - wore it heavy across his brow, and the slump of his shoulders, Lorenzo had realized. It was almost Atlas-like in description, in that it had become an unshakeable part of him, a too heavy burden he could not put down.

He wanted to hold Francesco, but he was astute enough to tell by now when Francesco might accept touch, and when it would only make him clam up harder. So he clenched his hand into a fist, and knelt next to him, so close to him, and yet unable to reach him. A matter of inches away. A whole ocean away.

“Do you remember when we were six?” Francesco said. “Let’s go back to that.” He wasn’t crying, not really, but by the catch in his throat, Lorenzo thought he wasn’t far off it.

“I remember when we went to the hill leading up to San Miniato al Monte,” Lorenzo said, in a stroke of understanding, nostalgia of his own, and sorrow, for Francesco and his childhood - lost and crushed in the cruelest way imaginable. “And we lay in the grass until it got dark, and watched the stars come out. I remember that.”

Francesco dragged a hand across his face, and took in a ragged breath that looked like it hurt, there was so much repression and tightly coiled anguish wrapped up into the movement. Lorenzo ached in sympathy. “It was simple, then,” he said, and was silent, looking out the window, but Lorenzo wondered if he was seeing anything at all. His gaze looked faraway, a million miles off, or perhaps, only two decades away.

“Come on,” Lorenzo said, impulsive, and got to his feet, holding out his hand for Francesco to grab on to. Francesco took it and let himself be pulled up, even though he looked puzzled, and the trust implicit in it made Lorenzo’s heart sing. “Let’s go.”

“Where?” Francesco said, nonplussed, the vestiges of strain still all too evident on his face.

“To the hill.”

“Lorenzo, are you insane? It’s past midnight!”

“No better time,” Lorenzo said, and he waited, to see what Francesco would do.

Francesco stood there for a moment, looking like he was waging an internal war with himself. “Fuck,” he said, equal parts disbelieving and delighted, laughing a little, for real this time, and Lorenzo’s heart soared again at the return of levity that eased a little of the deep strain. “Let’s do it then.”

And there they were, moving through the magical streets of Florence, so achingly familiar, and yet so different in that new hushed dusk, a bit like walking familiar streets in unfamiliar circumstances.

They stood at the base of the hill for awhile, and it was different, but it was the same too, the years melting away like ice in the heat of summer, the past and present intersecting. Above, stars dotted the sky, visible over the slope of the Duomo and the shadowed cityscape.

Francesco looked at Lorenzo for a long moment, and then a mischievous smirk lit his face with that unique brand of crafty humor Lorenzo had come to expect from him. “Race you, Medici,” he said, and took off up the hill.

“Cheater!” Lorenzo yelled after him, after he’d gotten over his second of shock, and then took after him, laughing. What other choice was there ever to take? He was beginning to suspect that he’d chase after Francesco forever, if the universe willed it.

Lorenzo was taller than Francesco, and faster and stronger besides, so it didn’t take him long to overtake Francesco, even with the head start. He grabbed him by the waist, and they tumbled into the grass, halfway up the hill, laughing wildly and freely, like boys once again, and not grown men.

“I win,” Lorenzo said, when they’d caught their breath. He was propped up on his elbows, and watching the angular planes of Francesco’s face shift in the starlight as he laughed.

“The journey is far more important than the destination,” Francesco sniffed.

“Yeah _ right_,” Lorenzo said, laughing a little despite himself. “You wouldn’t be saying that if you’d won,” and he watched as Francesco’s sly little smile turned into a full grin. There were strands of grass caught in Francesco’s hair, and he looked free and open like this. This, this was the present, the now. 

They sat there for awhile in comfortable silence, and watched the slow twinkling lights of the city going to sleep below.

“Do you miss Florence?”

“Constantly,” Francesco said, and Lorenzo was surprised at the forthright honesty. He’d half expected an acid retort about being in Florence right now. “I don’t know how not to. Even when I’m here, I miss it.”

“I don’t follow,” Lorenzo admitted. He wanted to though. He wanted to understand everything about Francesco that Francesco would let him.

“I think I’m missing a past. Or an ideal of the past,” Francesco said evenly, a little too pedantically to pass for truly composed. He’d obviously thought about this a lot. “My childhood with my parents. Those familiar places where I was the happiest I’ve ever been. And that’s tied to Florence. But what’s also tied to Florence are my years with Jacopo. And those aren’t pleasant to think about, but those are tied to Florence too. And here, I’m responsible for a thousand things that I don’t want to be, but I have to be, because I’m technically the only Pazzi left. So I can’t stop missing Florence, but it hurts to be back.”

Francesco exhaled, with a bone-deep weariness. “My uncle was not a good man, as I’m sure you know. It’s one of the reasons why I left in the first place. I needed to see who I could become without Jacopo. If I could be someone better than I was, or if I were capable of more. But somewhere along the way, it just turned into me running away.” 

Lorenzo reached out impulsively and took his hand, interlacing their fingers tightly. Francesco’s fingers were slender like the rest of him, and cold to the touch, but they were solid and steady. Francesco didn’t pull away, like he sometimes did with physical touch, like he didn’t know what to do with it. 

“Sometimes,” Francesco said, brutal in his self-assessment. “I can be all right. And I can laugh about it, and I’m fine, and I’ve got stupid faith that things are going to somehow be okay. Then sometimes, I’m not all right, and things just set me off, and I feel so lonely and lost and conflicted. I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know what to do about it. I think about it all the time.” 

He turned his gaze to the stars above, beseeching in repose.

“We can’t go back to the past,” Lorenzo said. “But you can find new places and people to belong to. To come home to. You’re not alone, even if you feel like you are,” He squeezed their interlaced hands together. He often wished he could do more to ease Francesco’s burdens. But then he remembered something his mother had liked to say: that in times of trouble, sometimes it was love and companionship that made all the difference. If nothing else, he could do this for Francesco. “If that helps at all.”

Francesco took in a shuddering breath, and let it out slowly, like he was letting something go. He turned to look at Lorenzo, his eyes glittering in the darkness, the stars reflected in the very gleam of them. A beautiful man, cloaked in starlight. “It does,” he said, and it sounded like he was talking about a hell of a lot more than what Lorenzo had just said. “Thank you.”

He squeezed Lorenzo’s hand back, and the air felt a little lighter, like a weight had lifted a bit, the early Autumn night still weaving, mild and balmy, around them, soft and like a song.

\--

Francesco had just gotten used to the dynamic of dinners at the Medici table, when Sandro Botticelli came to dinner. 

(The aforementioned dynamic at the Medici table was as follows: 

Lorenzo would come in after a day in the office at the bank, usually at about half eight, unless he was in a meeting, and he would come in griping about banking work. Francesco was beginning to suspect he did it more for comedic effect, because somehow, the man seemed to truly enjoy banking, or at least, being bank president, God knew how. It would make Francesco’s life infinitely easier if he were of the same disposition, but sadly, it was not so. Maybe it was a subliminal desire for despotic power - that had almost certainly been Jacopo’s motive for being bank president. Francesco had his suspicions. 

Lucrezia would then counter with complaining about the ladies in her book club, and Giuliano, who was usually home earlier than Lorenzo, would complain about everything in-between, whilst taking shots at Lorenzo whenever the opportunity presented itself - and they presented themselves surprisingly often. The other side of the table was the good natured half, for the most part. Guglielmo would tell funny stories about his own day at work, and Bianca would roast both of her brothers alive whenever the opportunity presented itself - and they presented themselves often. 

Interspersed between all of this, Lorenzo would constantly try to make conversation with Francesco for whatever reason. The other day, in a completely bizarre twist, Lorenzo had actually asked Francesco how he felt about ocean conservation in between arguments with Giuliano about who had been more popular in school, and whether Giuliano’s blonde hair had been a help or hindrance in this regard. 

It wasn’t like Francesco would admit it, but he liked the fact that Lorenzo sought him out, and even if it was ridiculous, it never felt forced. It was hard to feel excluded, even amongst such a loud and fast moving and ultimately banal conversation. It was absurd, but to Francesco, it was what a family should be like, or rather, what he had imagined belonging to a family might be like, and he _ liked _ it.) 

Botticelli was one of Giuliano’s oldest friends from school. He was an artist, and a very good one at that. Francesco had seen some of his work exhibited in Rome, and even if art wasn’t exactly his area of expertise, he’d found the paintings truly beautiful and moving, a mastery of colors and brushstrokes. 

He was also, apparently, one sarcastic motherfucker. It appeared that he and Giuliano really brought out the best in one another. 

“What have you been up to recently, Sandro?” Lucrezia asked him went they sat down at the table. It appeared like she rather thought of him like yet another son. It made Francesco’s heart pang a little to think about how easily she adopted people into her family, and how she’d treated him so kindly since he’d come to live here. 

“I went to this Raphael exhibition the other day,” Sandro said, whistling a little between his teeth to show his great appreciation. “I can’t even describe how amazing it was to see those works up close and in person.” Francesco perked up at the sound of the name - he’d written a monograph on High Renaissance patronage just a few months ago, and Raphael had been one of the artists he’d written in depth about.

“Raphael? What, the power ranger?” Giuliano said, just to be a little shit.

“He’s not even a power ranger, you dumb fuck,” Sandro said without missing a beat. “He’s a ninja turtle. And fuck you, you know exactly who I was talking about.”

“Language,” Lucrezia said mildly and passed Sandro the plate of potatoes.

“Anyways,” Sandro continued on, blithely. “I’ve also started another series of portraits. Hopefully I’ll display them sometime early in the new year, for my next gallery show. You’re all coming, by the way - you too Francesco.”

He then leaned across the table, and stared intently at Francesco, which was uncomfortable at best, and disconcerting to say the least, considering that they’d only just been introduced to each other about an hour earlier. “Say, Francesco,” he said, dark eyes still boring into Francesco’s face, flicking up and down. He felt rather like he was a still life object, being evaluated for painting. This made sense a second later, when Sandro continued. “Have you ever considered being an artist’s model? Because I’d like to paint you for one of those portraits, if you’d be okay with it.” 

Giuliano snorted hard, and Bianca slapped his arm. “You want to paint _ him_?” He said, sounding both disbelieving and derisive, which made Francesco bristle a little bit, even if he sort of shared the sentiment.

“Thanks so much for the supportive commentary,” he said acerbically. Giuliano saluted him sarcastically.

“Don’t be an asshole, Giuliano,” Sandro said, which was a little hypocritical, but Francesco wasn’t about to argue with the sentiment. “And yeah, he’s got a great profile with that brow and those cheekbones, you know. Very classically symmetric. Very brooding and attractive. Artist’s dream.” He winked, and although it was more friendly than anything, Francesco blushed a little despite himself and ducked his head, damn his inability to react to compliments with any semblance of composure.

Lorenzo, at the head of the table, stiffened visibly and let his fork clatter to his plate audibly. He hadn’t said anything thus far, which was vaguely uncharacteristic for him because he basically always had something to say, even when he shouldn’t.

“You okay, Lorenzo?” Bianca asked sweetly, all innocence.

“Just fine,” the man in question gritted out, picking up his fork and knife again slowly and sawing into his beef a little more violently than Francesco thought the cut of meat warranted. The Medici cook was excellent, and the meat was usually quite tender. 

Sandro looked at Lorenzo, and then at a confused Francesco, then back at Lorenzo, and then laughed uproariously. “So it’s like that, then?”

“Yeah,” Giuliano said, in a snotty tone, rolling his eyes so far back into his head that Francesco was almost afraid that his eyes were going to stay like that permanently. “It’s definitely like that.” He winced then, and Francesco was pretty sure that Lorenzo had just stomped on his foot, which didn’t make any fucking sense. Well - the foot stomping did, maybe - Francesco had often wanted to stomp on Giuliano’s foot himself - but the reason behind it remained a mystery. 

“Like what?” Francesco said, getting a little impatient. He didn’t usually participate much in the dinner banter, but he was beginning to feel like he was missing some sort of subtext. Even Lucrezia was nodding along in agreement. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Guglielmo said, but he was grinning too, and Francesco frowned.

“You’re supposed to be on my side,” he hissed. 

“I am, I am,” Guglielmo said, the little liar. 

“Forget them, Francesco,” Sandro said airily, like he hadn’t instigated the whole thing. “How about it?” 

Francesco hesitated a bit. “I’ve never been painted before,” he said slowly. “I don’t know if I’d be any good at it. The modeling.”

“Great!” Sandro said, as if Francesco had replied in the affirmative. “You’re going to be a natural. Give me your number and I’ll text you the details later.” He handed Francesco his phone, and Francesco slowly put his number into the contacts, wondering what exactly he’d just gotten himself into. When he looked up, he was just in time to catch the tail end of the shit-eating grin that Sandro was shooting Lorenzo’s way. Lorenzo looked rather murderous. It was an uncharacteristic thing to see on his usually amiable and charming features, and Francesco had to wonder if it wasn’t just Giuliano that Sandro brought out the worst in.

“So, Giuliano,” Sandro continued on, after Francesco had handed back his phone, scarfing down the potatoes. “How’s Simonetta doing?” 

“You fucker!” 

\--

Francesco had been in Florence for nearing two months, and it was like no progress had been achieved. He was in meetings from morning till night, meetings meant to resolve, and still, there was no peace. There was not even the hope of it on the horizon.

“You can’t seriously be thinking about selling the bank,” Salviati said, sneering. Behind him, the rest of the board, Bagnone, Maffei, and Bandini nodded their agreement. 

They had long since bypassed the thin facades and veneers of politeness with each other.

“And why not?” Francesco snapped back, at the end of his temper. Why the fuck not, he thought. It wasn’t like he had any interest in running the bank himself, and it wasn’t like he wanted Jacopo’s little band of greedy miscreants in power like this, and it wasn’t like he knew anyone to trust enough to run the bank itself. And he was running out of time. This had dragged on for far too long.

“Would you shame your family name like that? Throw away generations worth of work? Heritage? History?” Maffei said then, raising his voice. He was not above playing dirty and appealing to Francesco’s weaknesses to get what he wanted. Francesco knew this, and still it affected him.

Francesco flinched hard.

“We’re done for today,” he said quietly, and he put several documents into his briefcase and got up to leave. They’d been going around in circles since nine in the morning to now, almost dusk, and they were still going nowhere. But - maybe it was his fault.

The more he thought about it, the more he thought they were right. How could he abandon the Pazzi bank like that? What kind of selfish son was he, to put his own desires over duty?

Martina had emailed him this morning, and although it was kind, she had been firm in asking him when he planned to return to his office in Rome.

What could Francesco say to that? The thought of emailing her back and telling her that he wasn’t coming back at all was unbearable; the thought of actually deserting his responsibilities here in Florence, equally agonizing.

He returned to Palazzo Medici on autopilot, and went directly up to his room. Even though it was only half four, he got directly into bed, unable and unwilling to face anything else. He lay there, disjointed and confused, and then closed his eyes, and let himself go, to lie adrift in the vast oasis of bed. Some undefinable time later, he fell asleep.

He must have slept for a few hours anyways, because by the time he felt a hand on his shoulder, it was nearly completely dark in his bedroom. There was a cool hand on his forehead - Francesco registered it to be Guglielmo’s - checking his temperature, and he leaned into the touch absently. 

“Ciccio,” Guglielmo whispered.

Francesco hummed, and turned his face further into the pillow, unwilling to let go of the warm cocoon of safety and sleep. 

“Are you all right?” Guglielmo asked, and his familiar face was creased with concern.

It was such an unintentionally loaded question. Francesco shrugged. “Maybe,” he said, a little hoarse, awareness beginning to filter back in against his will. He felt like shit - he always did, after taking a nap - lethargic and slow in the extreme, like his head had been stuffed full of cotton wool. He’d forgotten.

“It’s dinnertime,” Guglielmo said. “Were you feeling ill?”

“Yeah,” Francesco said, sitting up. It seemed like a simpler explanation than spilling all of his feelings out on his poor brother in one sickening rush. Besides, it wasn’t untrue. He scrubbed at his face, which felt tight and dry. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized I’d slept for so long.”

“I can bring you up some food if you don’t want to go down.”

Francesco hesitated. The offer was tempting - to eat something, and go straight back to bed without having to face anyone else. But then he saw the worry pulling at Guglielmo’s mouth, and stifled a sigh. “No, I’m feeling better. Let’s go.”

They went down to dinner - it was thankfully just Lucrezia, Guglielmo, and Bianca, as Lorenzo and Giuliano were at a business dinner that night, and so it was quieter than usual. 

It was a testament to the lingering sleep inertia that he felt, that he had not noticed the glances the Guglielmo and Bianca were exchanging over his head, until it was too late.

As the plates were being cleared away from the table, Bianca cleared her throat. “Francesco, let’s go out tonight. I’ll tell Lorenzo and Giuliano to meet us at the bar that we all like, and we’ll all enjoy a Friday night out for once.”

Francesco opened his mouth, dissent already ready on his lips.

“You can say no,” she said, and her tone was understanding without being patronizing. “But I think it’ll be fun for all of us. And it’ll be casual, I promise.”

He thought about it; evaluated his options, and realized that while going out was really not top of his list, he didn’t exactly want to be alone with his thoughts tonight. “All right,” he said. He didn’t miss the relieved slumping of Guglielmo’s shoulders.

“Great!” Bianca said. “You have to let me help you get ready. Please? I have such good ideas for what you should wear, and how you should style your hair.”

Francesco sighed, and then gave up. “Why the fuck not,” he grumbled. 

Bianca turned slowly to look at her mother, who had been heretofore sedately watching the scene unfold before her, a shared unholy glee in their eyes. “Eyeliner,” they breathed together. 

“No,” Francesco said. Guglielmo was laughing himself sick, the unhelpful bastard, as the women continued to talk about styling his hair, and god forbid, the fucking eyeliner. 

“Oh it’s all right, it’s only my life that we’re ruining,” Francesco grumbled, well aware that no one was listening to him. 

He was proven wrong, however, when Bianca said airily, “Oh don’t be so dramatic Francesco, you’re going to love it,” which meant that they were listening, and were choosing to ignore him. He couldn’t tell which was worse. 

“Bianca,” Francesco said, and was actually surprised when both she and Lucrezia paused to look at him. “I want it noted that I’m undergoing this only under duress.” 

“Noted!” Bianca said brightly, and they each took one of his arms, and dragged him from the dining room into Bianca’s room. 

\--

Lorenzo settled into the booth next to Giuliano. It wasn’t late enough that the great sweaty masses had turned up yet, but it was just late enough that the music was playing at a fairly loud volume already, and the overall mood in the bar was quite lively and raucous. Although - that might have just been because it was a Friday night.

He had been surprised when Bianca had texted him, just he and Giuliano were finishing up with dinner, that they were all going out - her, Guglielmo, and Francesco - and that he and Giuliano should meet them at the trendy little bar that they sometimes frequented for drinks. It was mainly because he knew, from past conversations, that Francesco was not much for going out. (That was an understatement.)

“Do you never go out in Rome?” Lorenzo had asked, incredulous. He’d been slyly poking around, trying to figure out if Francesco had anyone back home, and had unintentionally uncovered, that not only did Francesco not have anyone - friend or otherwise - back in Rome, but he also did not do anything apparently, except for sleep, eat (on occasion), work, and read. It was a little horrifying, but it had mostly made Lorenzo’s heart hurt for Francesco.

“No.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“_Have _ you ever?” Lorenzo was a little afraid of the answer.

Francesco had screwed up his face and sighed. “A few times, at the start of university, when I was eighteen. But not since then.”

Lorenzo had wanted to ask why, but the dangerous look on Francesco’s face had convinced him to drop it.

So, Lorenzo was surprised, but pleasantly so, that Francesco was apparently coming out with them tonight. He rather imagined that Bianca had done the convincing, and wondered how his sister had managed it.

It had been a long, long, work week, though, and Lorenzo was grateful for the reprieve. Well - each week had its individual trials, but this week, they had been discussing the Pazzi bank situation, which struck quite a bit closer to home than most affairs of the bank tended to do. 

Lorenzo was not oblivious to the fact that the Pazzi bank, their former fiercest competitor, was now mired in uncertainty, chaos, and struggle. It was hard because Lorenzo’s advisers and senior management wanted him to press their advantage and do something about it to eradicate the threat forever, and Lorenzo could not argue that it was the smart business thing to do. 

But, it was hard too, because Lorenzo was in love with the Pazzi heir, and because he knew - could see firsthand, even if Francesco never directly talked about it - the strain that Francesco was being put under, with trying to figure out what course of action to take. Lorenzo wanted to help him, and yet did not want to push where it wasn’t wanted. He didn’t want to take advantage of the newfound rapport he had cultivated with Francesco, and he wanted to do right by him too.

It was a remarkably convoluted situation.

But then Lorenzo could not think about this anymore, because Francesco had just walked in - presumably with Bianca and Guglielmo, but he could not be bothered to check, because it felt like he had just been punched. 

Francesco was wearing well fitted black jeans that made his slender legs look endlessly long, and a loose dark green shirt, which fell low enough to show off delicate collarbones, and far more lean musculature, flexing under smooth pale skin, than Lorenzo had ever imagined he might see tonight. His hair, which he usually wore loose and wavy around his face, was smoothed back a little with gel, but only just a little, so a few curls still fell enticingly, framing that angular face. And, he was wearing fucking eyeliner, and it made him look dangerous, and bold, and sexy, and wild, all at once, and it was, quite possibly, one of, if not the, most miraculous sight Lorenzo had ever seen.

“You’re drooling,” Giuliano said into his ear in an undertone, sounding equal parts disgusted and amused. 

“Am not,” Lorenzo shot back on reflex, but he surreptitiously wiped at his mouth anyways. Really, he felt that he could hardly be blamed - not when Francesco looked like that. 

“Don’t start,” Francesco warned, when he came close enough to the table. “I know I look ridiculous, but once Bianca and your mother get their minds set on something, it’s impossible to tell them no.”

“No, you look really great,” Lorenzo said. He would have said more, or rather, tried to impress Francesco with his eloquence and charm, but words were beginning to fail him when Francesco was standing in front of him in all of that unearthly loveliness.

“Be serious,” Francesco said wryly, one side of his mouth curving up into that familiar half-grin. Then he looked at him, sweet and a little uncertain and shy underneath that stern, hollow cheeked beauty, and Lorenzo was well and truly lost. 

“I am,” Lorenzo told him earnestly, and a heavily charged moment passed between the both of them before Francesco stepped back with a nervous laugh.

And then Bianca was there, looking at them knowingly. “Oooooh,” she said, sotto voce. Guglielmo just looked resigned, and Giuliano affected a look of disgust, although Lorenzo was pretty sure it was mostly for show. 

“Shots,” said Lorenzo with a sigh, and got up to buy the first round.

\--

Two rounds into the night, Lorenzo tapped his shoulder. “I’m going to get something from the bar, do you want anything?”

“Just an apple juice, please,” Francesco said. “How much do I owe you?”

Lorenzo snorted. “I’m buying you your drink, Francesco. I’ve got it.” He flashed a bright smile at Francesco and then moved away from their table.

“Woooooow,” Giuliano said flatly, and then pounded back the rest of his own drink in a gulp.

“What?” Francesco said, absently, because he was sort of still staring after Lorenzo’s retreating figure, thinking about that smile - not that he’d have ever admitted to doing such a thing.

Giuliano shook his head, which made Francesco turn to look at him. “God, you’re both idiots. It’s painful to watch,” he said, which Francesco felt was a bit uncalled for, and also rich coming from him, and he opened his mouth to say so, but Giuliano cut him off again.

“I’m going to-” He made a vague hand gesture that could have meant anything from, going to the bar to chat up one of the ladies, to going to the bathroom, to jacking off the bartender, and then left without waiting for anyone to say anything.

Francesco sat there, turning his empty glass in his hands. He felt relaxed and comfortable and safe here, in this bar where he was afforded a sense of anonymity in the midst of the bacchanalian revelry, but was still surrounded by people he knew. Bianca had been right - the bar was just the right amount of casual, stylish, and warm, with neon lights, copper fixtures, loud conversation, and music. And - the alcohol was starting to run through him, loosening him up a little and making him feel pleasantly warm. He didn’t drink much as a general rule - the thought of not being in control was terrifying - beyond a glass of wine here and there, so while the one drink and a shot wasn’t enough to get him tipsy, he was feeling it more than he might have otherwise. 

Francesco felt another tap on his shoulder, presumed it to be Lorenzo, and looked up through the curls that were starting to fall into his face. He faltered when it turned out to be a stranger - flaxen haired and handsome in a boy-next-door kind of way.

“Buy you a drink?” the man asked - or rather, shouted, given the rising volume of the thumping music, giving Francesco a smoldering look accompanied by a devilish grin.

“Uh-” Francesco said, startled at the attention and then feeling self conscious about it. He hadn’t been kidding when he had said that he didn’t go out at all throughout college and then afterwards. It had just seemed too awkward and terrifying to go, particularly alone, and as a result, this was uncharted territory for him. He didn’t quite know how to say that someone was already getting his drinks, or that he wasn’t interested, without being awkward or unnecessarily mean about it. 

He looked to Bianca and Guglielmo, but it looked like no help was forthcoming - they were lost in their own world already, necking at each other like horny teenagers and causing a right scene. Well, they had always been dramatic - they’d planned to elope at first after all - up until the time they had settled into happy wedded bliss, and perhaps it was presumptuous of Francesco to assume that they’d left it all completely behind. “I-” 

“He already has a drink,” Lorenzo interjected, coming up from behind the other man, and handing Francesco his glass. His voice was friendly enough, but there was a cold hard edge of authority to it, that said he wasn’t to be trifled with. He slid into the booth next to Francesco and put an arm around Francesco, who squeaked a little in surprise. 

“Fair enough,” the other man said amiably, gave Francesco a nod, and wandered off into the crowd. 

He was gone, but Lorenzo’s arm was still around Francesco. He smelled warm, fresh, and a little spicy, like cloves, cinnamon, and sandalwood, and Francesco’s mouth felt dry all of a sudden. He took a gulp of his juice. 

“How are you feeling?” Lorenzo asked, and his voice was soft again. “Let me know if you want to head home or anything.” 

“I feel good,” Francesco said, and found to his surprise that he was smiling, and in a rush of boldness, put his head on Lorenzo’s shoulder. Lorenzo started a little bit, but before Francesco was able to read it as a rejection, Lorenzo moved his arm that was still slung heavily around him up a little, so that he could put a hand on Francesco’s hair and stroke it gently. 

It felt soothing and soporific, and he closed his eyes to enjoy it and dozed a little bit, a little bit sleepy, but most of all, truly and utterly happy. The music was still playing loudly, and people were talking somewhere in the background, and he felt unimaginably content, right there, with Lorenzo’s shirt soft underneath his cheek, that long fingered hand sweeping soothing strokes back and forth across his hair. He’d been unsure about going out at first, but now, he was so glad that he had. Here, in this half dream world, he could almost pretend that he was someone else, and that his worries didn’t belong to him for a time. When he had gotten out of bed earlier, truly low-spirited and disconsolate, he could not have imagined that he might feel so happy, just a short three hours later.

Some time later, there was the sound of a camera taking a picture, and Francesco opened his eyes to see Bianca pointing her phone at them and snapping away. “You’ll thank me later,” she said, and winked. 

\--

It was the next morning, before Francesco decided to broach something that had been perturbing him since last night. 

“Guglielmo,” Francesco said, over breakfast. It was a Saturday, so Giuliano was presumably still asleep, and Lorenzo had left to go work out. “Is Lorenzo acting strangely?”

Guglielmo stopped short, his cup of coffee halfway to his lips, his usually open face unreadable. “Strangely...how?”

“They were snuggling in the booth last night, and Lorenzo basically scared off a potential suitor by posturing,” Bianca said, which was essentially what Francesco had been trying to get at, but perhaps less bluntly. Besides, he hadn’t even realized that Bianca had been paying attention from where she and Guglielmo were making out shamelessly in the corner. It was a little scary.

“Oh god,” Guglielmo said, put down his cup fully, and started laughing helplessly a little bit. “It’s so great, you know?”

Francesco did not know.

“Okay, how might I put this? You know Lorenzo. He’s ah...got a bit of a history.” 

“He’s a hoe,” Bianca supplied helpfully. 

“Yes,” Guglielmo said, nodding. Francesco wondered if this was real life right now. “Well - he _ was_. This is now past tense, rather, because Lorenzo’s crazy about you, and he’s all anxious and nervous and uncertain how to deal with it. Which is at least ten thousand times more amusing when you really think about it, because he’s usually all charming and full of unassailable confidence, you know.” 

“We’re friends,” Francesco said, glaring at the pair of them.

“Yes,” Guglielmo said patiently. “But, also, you know.” He raised his eyebrows meaningfully.

“No,” Francesco snapped.

“Give it a shot,” Guglielmo said, and he had stopped laughing at this point, and this felt like genuine advice. “Ciccio, I know it’s terrifying, to let people in like that. But I think there’s really something there. When you look at each other, it’s like you both forget that there are other people in the room. And you of all people deserve to be happy.” 

It was good advice - the letting people in part - Francesco had to admit later, but Guglielmo was definitely wrong about the rest of it. 

He had been thinking about it for days at this point, turning that night at the bar over and over in his head, thinking about the way they had fallen into such an easy and intimate friendship in such a short order of time. Might it be possible? 

No. It was inconceivable, that Lorenzo felt anything for him like Francesco thought Guglielmo might have been insinuating. Beyond this, they belonged to different spheres of existence - Lorenzo in the light, and Francesco relegated to the shadows. Francesco felt grateful enough to have his friendship and his affection - to hope for more, however much the thought of it thrilled his heart and made it sing, was too much.

And oh, it was love, wasn’t it? Even if Francesco didn’t know the emotion well - had never felt it before, he was sure that the gentle bloom, that sweet ache in his chest, was love. 

But it would crush him if the worst happened - if he lost Lorenzo and the rest of the family entirely - and so he could not take this risk. Even if this illusion of home and family was only temporary, at least he had this, now. To have it taken away by a mistake of his own making would be unbearable. In time, he would have to go back to Rome anyways, and Lorenzo would still be here, in Florence. 

No, it was better to keep Lorenzo’s friendship and the companionship of family for as long as he could hold on to it, even if it meant getting over this love. 

It was cruel - and yet, wasn’t that life? It was life, as far, as Francesco had ever known it.

There was only one person to blame at the center of all this - himself. Of all the idiotic things he had ever done in his life, falling in love with Lorenzo was surely one of the worst - to be doomed to love, and know that he could not be loved back. 

He felt ridiculous, like the lovesick schoolboy he had never been, at age twenty-seven. He was disgusted with himself, and how easily he had let fall the careful walls that he had built to safeguard his heart. Why hadn’t he recognized it, why hadn’t he done anything about it, why hadn’t he created distance, before this love could flower? 

But - it had happened so organically, so naturally, and then all at once, that Francesco hadn’t even noticed when he’d fallen in love with Lorenzo.

\--

“These need to be filled and filed by the end of the day,” Lorenzo said, already swiping through his tablet, trying to figure out if his three o’ clock meeting had canceled or been moved to another day. It was Monday morning, and he’d come to Giuliano’s office to drop off some paperwork. 

He was thinking about a million different things at the same time, like whether or not he should meet with his advisers so they could discuss specific targets for the upcoming new year, or if it was too early, and also about how happy Francesco had looked that other night at the bar, how much he had liked the comfortable weight of Francesco’s head on his shoulder, the softness of his hair, and how he could get Francesco to smile like that again. 

“Why don’t you just ask Francesco out?” Giuliano said, putting the stack of papers on his desk and causing Lorenzo to nearly drop his tablet in shock. “It’s not like you two aren’t already kind of dating, what with the way you spend so much time together. Quite frankly, it’s sickening to watch you two dance around each other.” He mock gagged a little bit. 

“This is unprofessional,” Lorenzo said weakly, as if it would save him from having this conversation.

Giuliano looked at him - a challenge, to see if Lorenzo would walk away from the topic at hand. He knew that Lorenzo wouldn’t, and Lorenzo did too. It was rare that he held the upper hand, and it was obvious that he was quite enjoying it at the moment. With a sigh, Lorenzo shut Giuliano’s office door and took a seat opposite of his brother, while he waited for Giuliano to continue. “Like I was saying, you should just tell him. He likes you too, you know. Ask him on a date. You’ve never been afraid to speak your mind, and I know you’ve got plenty of experience in this arena.” Lorenzo decided to be the bigger man and ignore the dig. “Even Mamma approves of him. Although God knows what you see in him.”

“It’s different with him,” Lorenzo said, although he didn’t really want to get into the particulars of why it was. Those soft, somnolent nights where they spoke quietly and laughed, free of the world’s burdens for a time, were too intimate to share, even with Giuliano. “I don’t want to fuck it up. And I don’t know where I stand with him exactly, and I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on him when he’s already under so much pressure, and I’m not going to just risk it like that.” That was the crux of the problem, Lorenzo thought grimly. It mattered too much to fuck up. 

“This is so sappy,” Giuliano said, cringing. “I can’t even make fun of you properly because this is so pathetic.” 

“God, I really like him Giuliano,” Lorenzo said helplessly. “I really really like him.” He couldn’t yet bring himself to say the word ‘love’ aloud, but he felt that he was very nearly there anyways.

“I know,” Giuliano said, and this time, his voice was free of the good-natured mocking.

\--

They carried on after that, and it was all normal and good, and just like before. Even though Francesco was now aware that he felt more than friendship for Lorenzo, it didn’t mean that his unrequited love had to affect anything. He’d had plenty of practice in repressing his feelings, and the thought of getting sentimental on Lorenzo was vaguely nauseating anyways.

Francesco was almost sure now, that he was going to sell the bank. Well - some days he woke up, so certain that was going to do it that he felt jubilant with it - the feeling of a burden finally removed. But then he’d rise some other days, wondering what the hell had he been thinking, he couldn’t sell the bank to any random buyer, any soulless corporation, this was his heritage, this had been his parents’. He hovered on the precipice of it, a man too afraid to take the final leap.

They were well and truly into October by now. The leaves of the trees that rustled just beyond the palazzo walls were a wilderness of golden, crimson, and orange, and the temperatures outside had gotten much cooler as of late. 

It was a Saturday afternoon, and he and Lorenzo were in the library, weak sunlight slanting through the fluttering curtains.

“Okay,” Francesco said, laughing. “I can’t believe that they asked you to pose for the charity calendar. As if the poor orphans hadn’t suffered enough yet.” Even if he thought Lorenzo was magnificent, it didn’t mean that he had to let the other man know it. His head was big enough already.

“Hey!” Lorenzo said, offended, but he was laughing too.

Their laughter tapered off slowly, and they stood, leaning against the bookshelves, in comfortable mutual silence. Francesco looked out the window. He’d emailed Martina back evasively, and she had responded that she understood his situation, but she would need an official answer as to when he was coming back by the month's end. His time was almost up. 

“Francesco.”

“What?” Francesco was only half-listening.

“Francesco!”

“What?!” Francesco snapped, startled out of his thoughts.

Lorenzo looked nervous and tense all of a sudden, a little twitchy, which was very unlike him. “I have a gift for you, I didn’t know when to-how to-”

“What?” Francesco said, for the third time in a row, caught off guard.

Lorenzo smiled a little bit at this, and some of the nervousness visibly receded. “It’s like talking to a broken record,” he teased.

Francesco scowled. “It’s only because I keep losing brain cells, talking to you.”

There was obviously something wrong with the man, because Lorenzo’s smile widened at the insult, and he looked sure of himself again, but he didn’t re-engage like he usually would. Instead, he pulled a little brown packet, smaller than the size of his palm, out of his pocket, and tossed it towards Francesco.

Francesco caught it reflexively, and opened the soft little package, unsure what to expect. A thin, delicate silver necklace, with a tiny, perfectly formed diamond star strung on it, fell into his waiting palm. “God,” he said, hoarsely, transfixed by it. “It’s beautiful.” He looked up, thunderstruck and speechless. No one had ever given him a gift like this before. “Lorenzo, thank you.”

“Can I put it on you?” Lorenzo asked, and his voice was low.

“Yes,” Francesco stammered out, and Lorenzo took the necklace, and moved behind him to fasten the clasp.

“Do you remember that night on the hill?” Lorenzo said, and Francesco could feel his breath, warm at the back of his neck, could feel Lorenzo’s fingers brushing his hair off the nape of his neck, and then sweeping over the soft skin there as he fastened the necklace. He felt alight at the touch, and he shivered a little.

“Yes,” Francesco said again, even though he didn’t know if Lorenzo meant that night on the hill two decades ago, or that night on the hill just a few weeks ago. Didn’t know if it mattered. He felt dizzy and shaky, and very much in love.

“There were so many stars in the night sky, and-” Lorenzo came back around to face Francesco, but he did not move farther away, and Francesco could see his eyes, could see the azure intensity in them. “When you looked at me, I could see them reflected in your eyes, and I thought that I had never seen anything so wonderful in my life before.” 

He felt like he was burning up. It hard to think with Lorenzo suddenly so close, his hands hot and heavy, bracketing his waist. “Lorenzo,” he murmured, and it was a query, a plea, and a prayer all in one. 

\--

Francesco was driving Lorenzo fucking crazy. Well - to be fair, he’d been driving Lorenzo round the twist ever since Lorenzo had really figured out what that warmth in his chest whenever he looked at Francesco meant, and even before then, but it was different now. Now that they were here, and Francesco was right there, looking up at him with all that shining trust and desire made plain on a usually impassive face.

“You’re blushing,” Lorenzo said, and his face was very close to Francesco’s. He could see where the elegant lines of Francesco’s throat rolled when he swallowed. That tempting flush, rising high up on the curve of his cheekbones again. His hands were on Francesco’s waist suddenly, and he took advantage of the position to draw their bodies together. Francesco’s hands came up to grip his shoulders. 

The star necklace rested - the chain so thin that it was nearly invisible - glinting in the shapely hollow of his throat whenever he moved his head, catching the soft light of late afternoon. Lorenzo felt a hot rush of want and desire at the sight of it. 

“Am I?” Francesco took one slim hand off of Lorenzo’s shoulder to put it up to feel his flushed cheeks, not breaking the sacred covenant of eye contact.

“Francesco, I-” Lorenzo leaned in and it seemed like the world stilled and held its breath for a moment around them, a sweet lover’s suspension.

There was a sudden clatter, and the double doors of the library slammed open as Giuliano came in, and Francesco sprang away from Lorenzo as if he had been burned. 

They were both breathing heavily, and all Lorenzo could think was _ Goddammit_. Francesco’s lips were still a little wet and red from when he had licked them, mouth still parted a little enticingly, and he was so beautiful, and Lorenzo had been so. close.

Lorenzo reminded himself forcibly that Giuliano was his little brother and that he loved him very much, just to restrain himself from strangling him. 

Already, Francesco was closing in on himself again.

“It’s pure comedy out there,” Giuliano said. “Mamma invited one of her book club friends over for tea, and they’re making these barely veiled digs at each other now, and I think her friend is about to throw a vase at her. Bianca’s thinking about stirring the pot even more just for the hell of it.” Then, abruptly realizing that there had been maybe, oh, something like a _ moment_, a vital turning point, happening in front of him, he asked belatedly, “Did I interrupt anything?” 


	3. November // December // January

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the happy ending at last

Over the past few years, Francesco had gotten very good at denying himself the things that he wanted. This was, of course, a pretty depressing character trait if you got down to it, but the fact remained — he didn’t know how to be happy, and moreover, he didn’t know how to let himself be happy. 

It was for this reason that he avoided Lorenzo like the plague in the days after the almost-kiss. He thought about it constantly though — what had Lorenzo meant by it, what Lorenzo’s lips might have felt like, what a kiss would feel like, and so on. But then he comforted himself by thinking that sometimes it was just nice to have someone to love from afar — quietly and without expectation. A little distance, a little keeping of that impossibility of an actual relationship, kept everything from getting too real. Francesco was accustomed to harsh realities, and he wasn’t ready for it to break over him once again.

He knew also, abstractly, in some sense, that if he talked to Guglielmo about it, or hell, even Bianca, they’d tell him that he was being stupid, and that as always, he had been the greatest thwarter of his own happiness, and his own biggest doubter. He knew this advice, he had been given it so many times by his own brother, and yet, he could not take it up onto his shoulders. There existed a mental dissonance.

Perhaps Lorenzo fancied himself in lust with him. Perhaps Francesco was just convenient. Had Francesco somehow tricked him into thinking that he was a competent or worthy human being over the past few months? 

But then it would not be long, before Lorenzo would see through all of Francesco’s hastily built walls and facades, and then he would be known in whole, and seen and judged in naked, ugly entirety. What might he do if that became the case? It was one thing for him to know abstractly, arcanely, that he was an object of ridicule and isolation and pity, but for that verdict to be delivered down to him from Lorenzo himself would be unbearable. 

(The last possibility was something Francesco hardly dared to entertain, but he thought of it regardless. And what if it was that Lorenzo saw Francesco in full, and loved him despite his flaws, just like Francesco loved him back? What then? It was as terrifying of a possibility as it was thrilling. And Francesco was a coward, and he was afraid, he was so afraid.) 

It was a difficult truth to expound and to accept of himself — but Francesco was used to not liking himself very much, so this was not exactly out of his capabilities — that all he had ever done and all he had ever known was to quit and to run away from things. 

\--

Lorenzo had never been afraid to go after what he wanted. By nature, he was bold and willing to take (mostly calculated) risks. Perhaps it stemmed from a position of privilege too — if he was being fair, it wasn’t like he was turned down very often, and even when he had been, it had never taken him very long to accept it and move on with his life. He had never felt hemmed in by his own life, or restricted by lack of choice in the way that Francesco, he was beginning to suspect, did. 

Even so, it had been a little demoralizing to watch Francesco flee from the library like a bat out of hell. Actually — if Lorenzo were to be honest with himself, it had been crushing. 

Lorenzo felt that he had been relatively clear about his affections for him — short of confessing explicitly that he was very much into Francesco, he had done practically every conceivable thing to convey to the other man that a romantic relationship was definitely on the table, if Francesco was amenable. So, doubtless Francesco knew of his affections by now, he had been so plain with them, and if Francesco was avoiding him now — well, Lorenzo knew when he had been rebuffed without so many words too. 

This was fine. Francesco didn’t owe him anything at all, and Lorenzo truly felt no bitterness over it, just intense disappointment, primarily with himself. It was only that he allowed himself to hope that what he felt had not been so one-sided. That those nights and those words, those looks and emotions that they had exchanged with each other had been proof that there was a greater love that might flower between the two of them if given the opportunity. 

But in the days that came, in the glimpses of Francesco that Lorenzo caught — at dinner, sweeping through the hallways like the veritable ghost he had once been when he’d first moved in to Palazzo Medici — he was still wearing the necklace. It glinted like a fallen drop of starlight in the hollow of his throat. And this, more than anything, allowed Lorenzo to keep alight the dying embers of hope. Most importantly, it convinced him that Francesco didn’t hate him entirely. 

Still — it was awkward. At dinner, his mother, Guglielmo, Bianca, and even Giuliano picked up on the new strangeness and distance between Francesco and Lorenzo. The rhythms of dinnertime and life had become so settled and familiar over the past few months since Francesco had moved in — it was like they were forming a new family altogether — and the disturbance of it was jarring and uncomfortable for all involved. Francesco had reverted to that reticent, laconic shade that he’d been for the first few weeks, and not even Guglielmo nor Bianca seemed able to draw him back out from where he had retreated. 

Lorenzo wondered mostly, how he could salvage their friendship out of the wreckage that he had wrought of it. It would be all right if Francesco didn’t want Lorenzo the way that he wanted him — Lorenzo would simply have to pine over Francesco for the next eternity, and maybe one day, he would get over it. But he had already lost Francesco’s friendship and presence in his life once, and to have lost his friendship once again, particularly now that he knew all that Francesco could be, would be a devastation beyond childish sadness. What of it? He would lose those quiet nights, that thoughtful counsel, those hard-earned but all-the-more rewarding moments of laughter and lightness? What a terribly steep price. It was unthinkable.

He was particularly irascible for the next week or so, knowing that maybe he had fucked up everything beyond repair. It was not for a lack of desire - he wanted more than anything to fix things, but he was at a loss as to how to go about it, since he’d apparently put his foot in it the last time he’d tried to make a move. The employees at the Medici Bank kept a wide berth, and he found himself apologizing for being snappy more than once. Lorenzo felt badly about it, especially since he had always tried to be a fair and respectful person, and a good boss besides, but he couldn’t stop himself from sinking into that deep rut of irritation with himself, and his gloom of general despair manifested itself in shortness. 

It had been almost two weeks since the fateful almost-kiss disaster when Giuliano stormed into his office at 8am and yanked Lorenzo’s coffee out of his hand. (This was actually quite the achievement, because Giuliano never came to the bank earlier than 9am if he could help it.) 

“I was drinking that,” Lorenzo scowled, but then slumped back into his seat, suddenly too exhausted to argue. He hadn’t been sleeping well of late. 

“Tough,” Giuliano said, drained the cup to add insult to injury, and settled on Lorenzo’s desk. 

They sat in silence for a long moment, staring at each other, until Lorenzo huffed, unwilling to engage in Giuliano’s little game any longer. “What?” he snapped. 

“That,” Giuliano said, pointing an accusatory finger at his face. “You’re scaring everyone, huffing and brooding around everywhere.” He screwed up his face in an exaggerated pout in attempted mockery of Lorenzo.

“Okay,” Lorenzo said, flatly. 

“It’s true! Especially since you’ve been all aflutter over the past month or so, and now you constantly look like someone just died in front of you. You look like Francesco.” 

“Okay,” Lorenzo said again, just as flat and unencouraging. “Is that it?” 

Giuliano looked at him then, really and truly for a long moment, and gave a long-suffering sigh, abandoning the cracking pretense of levity. “Why don’t you just talk to him, dumbass?”

Lorenzo shrugged his shoulders. “Sure,” he said sarcastically, not even pretending to not know what Giuliano was talking about. Or rather, who, he was talking about. “What would I even say?”

“Uh, how about: I’m in love with you? For a start.”

“Ha.”

“I’m serious!”

“Yeah, I think he’s been pretty clear that he doesn’t feel the same way.”

Giuliano looked at him, disbelief naked on his face. “He doesn’t feel the same way? In what world? Are you dumb as fuck or what? You two have been doing that little mating dance since he basically moved in here. You think we all don’t know about the late nights you spend talking together? You think I’m blind AND deaf? We all see you two at dinner. When he thinks you’re not looking, he looks at you like you’ve hung the moon or some shit. It’s disgusting.”

He hesitated then for a moment, mimed gagging, and then said, "And...I'm never going to say this again, but he'd be stupid to not want you."

Lorenzo scrubbed his hands over his face hard. “Giuliano.” He hesitated for a moment and then plunged into the thick of it. “I feel like I’ve been pretty clear that I like— that I’m in love with Francesco. I—I brought him to the hill to go star-gazing.” He pointedly ignored the face Giuliano pulled at this. 

He continued, “We talk about things together — like really personal, difficult things and short of telling him outright, I basically tell him all the time that I like everything about him. I gave him a necklace in the shape of a star and told him that it reminded me of his eyes. I fucking tried to kiss him in the library — thanks for that, by the way. And so I think I can take a hint since he’s basically been avoiding me like the plague since then.” 

He stopped to take a breath, and caught Giuliano’s eyes, which held his, steady and unwavering, and at last it struck him how he might be able to articulate the very crux of the matter.

“It just sucks because it’s okay if he doesn’t feel the same way, I just don’t know how to fix this, and I don’t want to think or accept that I’ve lost him as a friend entirely. He makes my life better, he makes me happier. Okay? So I’m sorry if I’ve been super fucking annoying the past week, I promise I’ll get over myself soon, but I don’t want to talk about this anymore because it’s stupid and everything just fucking sucks.” 

Lorenzo sucked in a deep breath, suddenly feeling a little empty, a little hollow, a little heartsore. He looked away from his brother then, and down at his hands, embarrassed, inexplicably ashamed, and emotionally exhausted. It wasn’t so much that he had never embarrassed himself in front of Giuliano, but moreso that it was difficult, regardless of how well you knew the other person, to express your truest insecurities and despairings without feeling uncomfortably vulnerable.

“Lorenzo,” his younger brother said, solemn in a way he hardly ever was. “I like to give you a lot of shit, mainly because that’s like, our dynamic — and God knows I still don’t understand what you see in Francesco, but — he makes you happy in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before.” His voice was serious and measured in cadence. 

“I see you and him, you know, when we’re all together, and all I can say is that there must be some misunderstanding. You light up when he’s around, and he lights up when you’re around. It’s reciprocal, I swear it. Maybe he’s embarrassed or shy — we all know he isn’t exactly the most open, or emotionally available. If you wait for him to make a move, you’ll probably wait forever.” 

They laughed at this a little, and it allowed Lorenzo to gather himself up and meet Giuliano’s eyes. Giuliano’s eyes were blue — of the same shade as Lorenzo’s. Even though their coloring had always been different — Lorenzo dark, Giuliano light — it was their eyes that had always been the same, and how people had always known that they were brothers at first glance. In that moment, Lorenzo felt the comforting, magnetic weight of that connection. 

“And even if it is that he doesn’t love you in the way that you love him — you don’t _ know _ yet. Just fucking ask. At least you’ll know for sure where you stand. Lay the cards on the table, dumbass. I know it’s easier said than done, but if there’s one thing I’ve always looked up to you for, it’s your bravery and willingness to keep going, even in unknown situations, even in the hard, uncertain times. You deserve to love and be loved in return, and if he’s the one that can give that to you, then I think you’ll regret it if you don’t take the shot. This really could be something. It might not be, yeah, but, Lorenzo, it _ also could be_.”

Lorenzo knew that for many, Giuliano was viewed primarily as some sort of comic relief, some light-hearted, loose foil to Lorenzo’s more determined adherence to duty and glory. Lorenzo himself was guilty of sometimes seeing his younger brother that way, brushing him off at times or underestimating how much Giuliano saw and cared for his family and friends, and it was at times like these, that Lorenzo found himself to be humbled by the knowledge that Giuliano was so much more than what he often played himself off as. That was to say — behind all the blithe smiles and careless actions was someone who had grown up to be a man of character. 

“You’re right,” Lorenzo said, when he had found enough voice to say it. “Shit, when did you get smart?” He leaned forward to fist his hand in the back of Giuliano’s suit, and pulled him into a hard embrace, ignoring Giuliano’s squawk of surprise and indignation. It was an awkward position, but neither of them made any move to pull away.

“Wow,” Giuliano said, his voice muffled into the fabric of Lorenzo’s suit where his face was mostly squished. “Arguing from the moral high ground is intoxicating. Is this how you feel talking to me all the time?”

“Shut the fuck up, brat,” Lorenzo said, laughing despite still feeling a little choked up and so incredibly grateful. He held on to Giuliano harder, and Giuliano squeezed back.

\--

There was a knock on Francesco’s door.

He frowned at it. It was late, and he had been brooding by the window, looking up at the stars again, which shone as brightly as ever, but seemed to impart little comfort. The only person that he could think of that might conceivably seek him out — given that Lorenzo had taken to also avoiding him by now (although this, Francesco was willing to admit, was his own damn fault) — was Guglielmo, and it wasn’t like his brother would really knock and wait before entering anyways. 

He went over to the door, pulled it open, and abruptly came face to face with Lucrezia.

“Francesco,” Lucrezia said, graciously ignoring Francesco’s look of surprise. “May I come in?”

“Of course,” he said, trying smoothly to cover up his discomfiture.

She went and sat down on the chaise lounge near the window, and patted the spot next to her, indicating that she wanted Francesco to sit down there, and when he did, hesitantly, she took his hands in hers. 

“You must be wondering why I’m here,” she said, but she was smiling softly, so Francesco thought he might be safe from her beating him up on Lorenzo’s behalf, although nothing was ever so certain. He wouldn’t have blamed her for it — he kind of wanted to beat himself up too.

“You’re always welcome. I’d be happy to do whatever I can to assist you,” Francesco said evasively. Truth be told, although he was indeed a little curious, he didn’t know if he exactly wanted to hear why she was here either.

“I just wanted to speak to you,” she said, as kind and firm as ever. “I know that things have been difficult, especially between you and Lorenzo, but also in general, and I wanted to see how you were doing.”

To his sheer horror, Francesco found himself abruptly blinking back tears, and one fell before he could blink them away fast enough. Lucrezia went and cupped his cheek though, and brushed the moisture away with a soft, sweeping thumb motion, and Francesco could not stop a few more tears from sliding down his cheeks, undone at the gentleness where harshness might have allowed him to collect himself. This was perhaps what growing up with a mother would have been like. He’d thought it many a time, any yet, the idea still served to undo him at any moment. 

“I’m sorry,” he choked out, ashamed at the emotion. “It’s just been a long few days. Month. Months.” Really, it had been years. 

“I know, dear one,” Lucrezia said. There was something so remarkably genuine about the look in her eyes that it compelled Francesco to speak plainly — all of the humiliating, monstrous things that he had been keeping tightly wound up inside himself unspooling out of his mouth at long last. 

“I want to be brave,” Francesco said, and his eyes burned a little bit and his throat felt thick, like he was about to cry. “I am so tired of not being enough and not being strong enough to change anything about it. I want someone to tell me what to do, how to do it right.” He lived, but just barely. It was more a weak act of mimicry, this repressed existence that he led.

Her brow creased. Honesty writ deep in the creases of her face. “You are brave, and more than that, you are enough, Francesco, just as you are,” Lucrezia said firmly. “I know you’re afraid. But bravery has never been about being fearless. It has always been about doing and living and existing in spite of that fear.”

Francesco shook his head. He wanted so badly to believe it, he was trembling with it, and yet, he couldn’t. 

Lucrezia put her hand on his chin, and lifted his face up so that their eyes met. “Francesco, if you cannot yet believe yourself, believe _ me_. I am not lying to you,” she said, and the sheer unparalleled conviction that he saw in her eyes was mighty to behold. 

“Forgive me,” Francesco said hoarsely. “I don’t think you are lying at all, and it is incredible that you can believe this about me and think so highly of me, but—” He hesitated and plunged on. “I have spent twenty-seven years living with myself, and most of the time, I am so sick of my own bullshit that I can hardly look at myself.” He felt his voice start to tremble again. “I don’t know how to live, how to feel, how to act. I wonder all the time, what the hell is wrong with me that I can’t function like a normal person.” 

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Lucrezia countered, with a reassuring lack of hesitation, but then she pursed her lips and paused for a moment, gathering up her thoughts. “Nobody knows what they’re doing in life, Francesco. We all simply do and try our best, and you are no different. Maybe it's just that you’ve been so afraid of not being enough that you can’t see that you already are. God knows that you’ve had a hard run of life so far — harder than most.” 

She took a deep breath. “And now, it is my turn to confess and beg your forgiveness.”

Francesco opened his mouth to stop her, but she raised her hand to halt his protests. “Francesco, I’m so sorry that I didn’t do more for you when you were a child. I can’t express how sorry I am that I wasn’t able to take you away from Jacopo. You don’t have to tell me anything about it, but I know bits and pieces from Guglielmo, and I can imagine how terrible and how traumatizing it must have been.”

“There wasn’t anything you could’ve done,” Francesco said quickly, even as he flushed, burned with further shame that Lucrezia might know of his past and his past weaknesses. And yet, although he did not want her unfounded guilt, it still felt good to know that Lucrezia cared, nearly twenty years on from those wretched days. More than this, it was incredible how she could beg his pardon now, when really, he was the one who should be begging hers, for hurting her son, then and now. 

“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one,” Lucrezia said. “But — it’s simply proof that you are strong and that you are brave. To grow up in that environment and come out a fine young man — compassionate, thoughtful, intelligent — is that not proof that you have persevered and come out of it intact? You, being present as you are now, is living proof that bravery and strength exists. Beyond this, there are people, particularly in this house, that love you, as you are, because you are a person worthy of respect and admiration.”

She winked at him a little then, adding a touch of lightness to the situation, and Francesco laughed a little wetly, in spite of himself. This itself, he thought, a little abstractly, this moment, was proof of what could happen if you let someone in. 

“You’re almost all the way there. You’ve learned what it’s like to love and be loved. Open yourself up to it. And trust yourself. And those that love you.”

Francesco blushed then. If there had been any doubt as to whether Lucrezia knew the true nature of the relationship that had been budding between her eldest son and Francesco, it had been erased.

“Thank you,” he said, in spite of how hot his cheeks felt. “For everything. But most of all for caring.” It was such a small thing. It was everything. It was an immeasurably powerful thing to love and be loved.

Lucrezia leaned in and embraced him, and she smelled like perfume, but most of all she was warm and gentle and solid. They sat together for a while afterwards, in that unbroken, peaceful silence, and looked at the night sky, and the stars glinted outside, warmer than they had been before. 

And Francesco thought that perhaps it was time for change after all, time for a little self-belief, time for a leap of faith. It was ridiculous, these self-imposed rules he’d placed on himself for so long, even if they had been necessary for his survival. He had not irreversibly missed the boat. It had simply been waiting at the dock for him all this time. He was twenty-seven, and he was still young and able and willing, and maybe there was no statute of limitations after all, on entering an age of change and growth. 

\-- 

Francesco had returned to Palazzo Pazzi. He was standing again outside of those formidable walls. The terror had not dissipated, no, but now, it was tinged with hope, and a belief, a feeling he couldn’t quite describe fluttering around in his ribs.

“Come on, idiot,” he muttered to himself savagely. “Open the door. It’s just a fucking house.”

He knew very well that it wasn’t _ just _a house, in the same way that Florence was not just a place, but if he was ever going to get himself to step back into Palazzo Pazzi, it would require a little bit of self-wheedling, a little consoling and stretching of the truth. 

It worked though, and he unfroze, and pushed open the door in defiance of his own foolishness, stepping right back into that unfortunately familiar courtyard. 

Broad daylight made the courtyard seem less imposing. Francesco closed his eyes briefly, and felt the weight of memories settle back into his bones like a familiar but unwelcome spectre, and yet, this time, he did not crumble. He held the truth of the gentle words and the kindnesses that he had been given close to him, and he wore these things like armor. They — the idea that he was worthy of love, and that he was defined not by his past — bolstered him, and kept him standing tall. 

When he bent down to touch the cobbled steps leading up to the fountain, he thought not only of the bitter memories of nights spent out there alone, but also of the blurry but joyous times of earliest childhood recollection, where he had once frolicked with his parents and Guglielmo. There were very few absolutes here, Francesco thought. That which had given him immeasurable pain had once given him unimaginable joy too. He had been suppressing the evil for so long, that perhaps he had neglected to think upon all the good that had once occurred here. 

Instead of making him feel depressed, bitter, and bringing him to the brink of panic, it made him angry. He had let Jacopo take so much from him. Even in his absence, even in his death. It was a cleansing anger. 

Francesco stood then, and went to the doors leading into the palazzo, and he flung open the dark doors, defiant, aching for some sort of fight although he didn’t really know with whom. Searching for some way to express the rage he had suppressed for so long. Ready for a battle.

And yet, as he tread in the house and looked at the long, yawning hallways, the patterned tiles, and familiar staircases, the shadows fled and scuttled away from him. There was a trepidation mixed with incredible defiance that saturated his very bones, but it was also this that which made him incandescent with a newfound strength. The rooms were quiet and a little musty with disuse, but there was nothing there. No monsters lurking around the gleaming corners, waiting to pounce, no unbearable voids of darkness that threatened to drag him under permanently. Just a tired, old house that had lain empty and quiet for too long.

Perhaps the very act of opening these long sealed doors, drawing in those long concealed memories into his body in acceptance of both the good and the bad that had occurred to him, was an ultimate exorcism of the darkness itself. This, this was the battle that Francesco had been looking for.

At last, he went to a room he hadn’t been in since right after his parents’ funeral — the airy lounge that his parents had liked to relax in. When he stepped through the doorway, it was dark, and the curtains were drawn. Francesco opened up the window and let the light in, and the afternoon sunlight illuminated the motes of dust in the air and made them look like drops of sun. 

In this gentle lighting, Francesco could see at last, the portrait of his mother and father, from where it hung above the desk. They looked unbearably happy and young in it, pressed together closely, even though this was supposedly a formal painting. And they were on that familiar hill leading up to San Miniato al Monte, overlooking most of Florence. In that picture, they were perhaps the same age as Francesco was now, maybe even younger. It hurt Francesco, to see their beloved faces, immortalized like that for all time and knowing that he would never see them in person again, but it was a good kind of hurt, more of an ache rather than an unbearable agony, and he savored it, the sweet soreness of remembrance.

“Mamma,” he whispered. “Papa.” 

Predictably, there was no answer, and he felt ridiculous, talking to a painting like this, and yet he soldiered on with this strange task. He was finally ready to reach back out to himself — to his past, which was inextricable from his identity. He had been waiting and wondering, and afraid for so long, and here he was. Perhaps they had been waiting all this time for him to come back and lay them to rest. And here he was at last. 

“I miss you,” Francesco said, and stroked his fingertips lightly over the painted edges of their smiling faces. “Every day, I missed you, and I miss you still. If you’re listening, I’m sorry that I’ve wasted so many years, that I’ve been so afraid all this time. But I think I’m finally ready to live life again. To try, even though I’m so scared.” 

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, and imagined the kiss of his mother, bussing his cheek, and the large hand of his father running through his hair. A breeze, a gust of wind, or perhaps, a cosmic gift of a gesture, came in through the open windows and wound around him. It felt spiritual, sacrosanct, and melancholic, but not unbearably so. And — it felt hopeful.

What had been lost and broken here? How had he been broken here? Could it be fixed?

What new and beautiful things might grow out of the grounds of tragedy and long forgotten happiness?

Francesco owed it to himself to find out.

\--

Lorenzo had still been coming to the library every night after dinner. Francesco had obviously not been making his customary appearances, given that he was determinedly avoiding Lorenzo, but for some reason, Lorenzo had still felt compelled to sit there. Sometimes he read, sometimes he fucked around on his phone, and sometimes he just put headphones on and listened to music for a solid few hours before heading up to bed. It was like he was waiting for something to happen, the penitent man praying at the altar for a miracle.

Then — nearly three weeks after this had all gone down, Francesco showed up. 

Lorenzo had been lying on the large rug, headphones in, staring up at the ceiling, and wondering abstractly just how long the fresco of singing angels in the garden had stood there and just how much longer that kind of art might survive. A shadow half fell across his face, and Francesco’s lovely scowling mien appeared above him like a mirage of an oasis in the desert. 

“Holy fuck!” Lorenzo said, kind of like an idiot, but he didn’t think he could be blamed for this, in the face of this actually miraculous event occurring.

“What are you doing on the ground?” Francesco said, heavy brow furrowed.

_ Waiting for you_, Lorenzo almost said, but he managed to refrain, for once in his life. “Uhhh...communing with the ceiling?” he said, in lieu of that, which was almost worse, and sat up. “How’s life?”

“Bad,” Francesco said.

“Fuck,” Lorenzo said afterwards. “Same here.”

Francesco looked down, a little shamefaced. “Sorry.”

“No— look, I’m the one who’s sorry. Look I know I made you uncomfortable the other night or whatever, and I really didn’t mean to, and I’m sorry that I did and I'm sorry that I put you in that position. We can forget it or whatever. Fresh start?” From his position on the rug, he looked up at Francesco, who was still standing awkwardly nearby. He wondered just how many fresh starts they might have to endure, and hoped that it wouldn’t take another twenty years for Francesco to come back to him. 

“I miss you,” he added lamely.

“Don’t be sorry,” Francesco said, and a dark red flush was starting to creep up the sides of his cheeks. He was still wearing the star necklace. “I— I liked it. I’m sorry I ran away. I miss you too.” He said the last bit faster than the rest, and then averted his eyes, bashful.

Well fuck, Lorenzo thought. Francesco had liked it? Was that synonymous to I like you? Where were they supposed to go from here? 

“How has the business with the bank and the estate been?” he said then, scrambling for something to say to fill the silence that had expanded to keep them both at a distance from one another. It was a reminiscent of their first meetings in the library, a little awkward, but mostly thrillingly precipitous enough for both of them to keep leaning over the edge, toeing at an invisible line they didn’t really yet know why existed.

“Fucking terrible,” Francesco said. “I have no idea what to do. I want to sell the bank, I want nothing to do with running the bank, or dealing with all of Jacopo’s old cronies. But at the same time I can’t do it, because it was my parents’. And it has their name on it, and the names of all my ancestors, and I can’t be the one to let go of that kind of history, that kind of legacy that my parents wanted for me. I’m running out of time because I have to go back to Rome, to my actual job. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, but worse, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

It was quite the flood of information from Francesco, who had heretofore, been quite closed off about this particular thing that had obviously been troubling him, and Lorenzo found himself gaping a little bit, before reaching out a hand to offer support of some sort, which Francesco took before Lorenzo could second-guess himself, his hand warm and firm in Lorenzo’s grip.

“It’s not all bad though,” Francesco said, continuing his sudden brief foray into loquaciousness and openness. To his credit, even though he looked uncomfortable with the effusivity, he did not break eye contact. He was still blushing though, and this was doing some things to Lorenzo’s heart.

“Oh?”

“I went back to Palazzo Pazzi yesterday.” Francesco looked a little distant then, before gathering himself. “I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve been staying here since I’ve been back in Florence.”

Lorenzo shrugged with the shoulder attached to the arm that Francesco wasn’t currently holding. He had been wondering a bit, but he had never wanted to press Francesco for much more than he wanted to give him.

“After my parents died,” Francesco said, suddenly fierce. “Jacopo would hit me, and scream at me all the time, and lock me out of the house, and tell me I was worthless. And I believed it for a long time, and that’s why I couldn’t go back, because it hurt too much to think about all of that, and to think that it was true — that wherever I’d gone and whatever I did, I’d only grown into that mantle, instead of growing out of it. But I went back to that house yesterday, because he doesn’t get to take those good memories of Palazzo Pazzi away from me. He doesn’t get to take the memory of my parents away from me, or my actual childhood. He’s taken so much away, he doesn’t get to have this. He doesn’t get to have any more.” 

“I’m glad you got that closure,” Lorenzo said, when he had parsed through that impromptu monologue and also through the blinding rage that struck him when he thought about Jacopo Pazzi. He was unspeakably proud and in awe of Francesco. He wanted to do something drastic and terrible in retribution, even though Jacopo was already dead. “But actually fuck Jacopo so hard. When I think about how awful it must have been for you— ”

“I don’t want you to pity me,” Francesco returned, eyes flashing. He looked unhappy now, and his mouth was pressed thin. “I didn’t tell you this so you could feel sorry for me.”

“I’m not,” Lorenzo said, honest, like he had always tried to be, especially with Francesco. Of course he felt awful about what Francesco had obviously gone through, but pity him? Never. “I admire you so much, Francesco. More than I could ever express.” _ I love you_, was what he didn’t add. 

They were quiet for awhile afterwards, still holding hands, although Francesco had now deigned to join him, sitting on the carpet. They were close, two hummingbird heartbeats hand in hand. It was late by now, and it felt almost just like before — when they had spent all those nights talking before their big falling out — but at the same time, it was different, better, closer, in a way. Gaps and spaces had closed, like puzzles pieces coming together, mechanical gears clicking into place.

Lorenzo looked reluctantly at the clock, which was nearing midnight by this point. He felt wired, a little nervous, exhilarated, and possibly more alive than he had ever been before, but he was a mostly responsible adult, and he had to go in to the office early the next morning and be mostly functioning. Francesco caught his line of sight and smiled. 

“Go to bed, idiot,” Francesco said, but his eyes were brighter now. Happier. It was a good look on him, although most everything was. He gently removed his hand from Lorenzo’s grip, but patted his hand a few times to offset the loss. “I’ll be here tomorrow night.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” Lorenzo said, his voice embarrassingly breathless, but it was okay because Francesco flushed too, flustered. “Good night.” He stood, wincing a little when feeling returned abruptly to his leg, which had fallen asleep, and then turned to leave, but then spun around, feeling awkward, shy, uncertain, and very much still in love. “Francesco? Thanks for ah— thanks for telling me all of that. Thanks for trusting me with it.” 

Francesco looked down for a moment, seemed to steel himself, and brought his dark, fathomless eyes up to meet Lorenzo’s, that pretty blush still staining his cheeks, the barest hint of red over warm olive skin. “Thanks for listening,” he said quietly. 

_ I’ll always listen to you_, Lorenzo wanted to say, but he thought it might be too much — it was definitely too much for that night anyways, and so he just nodded and smiled, and turned to go. He had some work to do, people to talk to, and things to arrange, after all. 

Internally though, he was absolutely giddy with elation.

Here was Francesco, bared at last. Not in full, but he was letting Lorenzo in, in a way he had never before. He was reaching out across a once-interminable space to clasp hands with Lorenzo. It felt like a victory of epic dimension.

\--

It was definitively at the forefront of Lorenzo’s mind — Francesco’s dilemma with the bank that was. He could not wholly fix things for Francesco, nor did he want to force Francesco’s hand, but he wanted to help, and this was possibly something he could help with.

He went to see his advisers the next day, about his half-formed idea, because he was reckless sometimes, but this wasn’t precisely something that should be rushed into, not only for Francesco’s sake, but his own. Rome wasn’t built in a day, after all. 

And then, when he’d received mostly enthusiastic approbation from his board, he went to see Guglielmo, who laughed himself sick when he heard Lorenzo’s plan, and said: “This is the most ridiculous and romantic shit I’ve ever heard of, you absolute embarrassment.” and also, “If you hurt my little brother, I _ will _murder you.” 

About a week later, when he and Francesco met in the library after dinner though, as they had begun to do so again, he had a proposition for him.

It was actually a remarkably unsexy, work-related proposition, now that Lorenzo thought about it. But Francesco was not some discreet lover, to be hidden away, secreted in bed, only loved in only pretty words or carnal acts of pleasure. He was to be loved and respected and vaunted in practice. He was a man — the man — who Lorenzo wanted to build a life with.

Lorenzo hoped that Francesco would understand what he was saying, understand what was unspoken but writ in his actions, even if he had not yet voiced it out loud. 

“Francesco,” he said, heart in his throat, a man standing on the edge of the unknown. “I don’t want to, I don’t know, ruin things again, or pressure you into anything, but there’s something that I wanted to ask, or run by you, there’s no pressure to say yes or anything, you can think it over or talk to someone about it, or— fuck, tell me to fuck off afterwards and we’ll just never—”

“Are you having a stroke?” Francesco said, from his perch on the other end of the sofa, snorting a little, not looking up from the narrow tome he was reading. “Relax.”

“Fine,” Lorenzo said, scowling. “How would you feel about the Medici Bank buying up the Pazzi Bank, and then merging the name into the Medici-Pazzi Bank.”

A fraught beat. Francesco closed his book with a snap, and leaned forward to hold Lorenzo’s gaze in that deeply intense stare of his. There was something in his expression that Lorenzo dared not try to translate, lest he lose his nerve.

“I want to do right by my own father, and by the Medici bank,” Lorenzo said, and his voice became surer and steadier the more he spoke. It came with the burgeoning realization — something that he had really known all this time — that whether or not this plan of his came to fruition, it was vital that he had at least tried, that he had at least done this. He was putting the ball in Francesco’s court from here on out.

“But I want to do right by you too. If you are willing to sell me the Pazzi Bank, I will rename the merged banks a combination of both of the names, so that your family history might live on too — so that this vital piece of Florentine history might not be lost, nor given away to Jacopo’s old friends.” Francesco’s eyes had become round with shock, and perhaps...desire?

“This way, you won’t have to helm it, if that’s what you want. If Guglielmo is willing, he can even supervise the merging, and continue to oversee affairs related to the Pazzi side of the combined bank. It’ll be—” Lorenzo paused. “Something new.” 

Francesco’s eyes were narrowed now, a little hesitant to trust, maybe, but mostly thoughtful. “Why would you do this for me?” he asked, and his voice was firm and insistent, but the trembling of his hands, steepled around his mouth, gave him away. The sharp lines of his cheekbones, limned in the half-light, were a miraculous thing.

And then, Lorenzo thought, it was now or never. He was strong because he was so often willing to be vulnerable and to open himself up to love, not despite it. 

“Because I love you,” he said, and the words came out in a tangled, honest rush. “And whether or not you want me back, I had to say it. And whether or not you love me back, I want to do this for you, no conditions attached, not because I pity you, or think you need the help, but I want to give it to you if I can.”

Francesco was trembling. There was something beautiful and fragile blossoming in his eyes, that lovely flowering thing that might be called hope. A man with stars in his eyes, and one nestled by his throat.

“If it makes you feel any better, this is not an impulsive decision. I’ve thought this over and talked it over with my advisers and my board, and your brother too. Even though it might be a potential solution for you, it’ll be good for me too. But mainly, if this could help you, then I hope you’ll consider it. If you say no, that’s fine too. It’s your choice, Francesco.”

\--

Francesco understood this gesture, and he understood the declaration of love, and he was awed by it. It was not simply the generosity of it, although that was a part of it. It was the inherent romance and intimacy laid into the very framework of this astonishing thing, for all that it was a business proposition. And it was more than that. Lorenzo had never asked more of Francesco than what he was willing to give, and he had always given everything that he could to Francesco. 

These were truly untried and untested waters, this, the great deep. It was terrifying, everything was so fucking terrifying, but Lorenzo was worth taking that leap for. And Francesco wasn’t some sort of background character, a half-formed shadow, in someone else’s epic. He was his own, living, breathing, mess of a human being, with hopes, thoughts, feelings, and resolution. His own autonomy. 

He couldn’t speak, but in lieu of this, he reached out for Lorenzo’s hand, and saw the hope bloom in those familiar and warm blue eyes, and it emboldened him, to know that he was the one who had put that hope in Lorenzo’s eyes. This moment felt charged, weighty, and intimate, like the winds of change were blowing in somewhere, and the scales were tipping one way or the other, and Francesco had no idea where they might end up, but he was willing to reach for it now, and it was this that made all the difference.

“I can’t say yes without, without thinking it over first,” Francesco said, quietly. “But this is the most generous gesture that anyone has ever extended to me, and it—it means more to me than I could ever express.”

“Yeah?” Lorenzo asked hopefully, and took Francesco’s remaining hand, so that he was clasping both of Francesco’s in his, tentative at first, and then solidifying his grip when Francesco didn’t move to pull away. 

“I’m afraid I’m not who you think I am though,” Francesco said then, profoundly and almost painfully aware of the gravitas of his words, because if Lorenzo was ready to lay himself out on the ledge, he owed it to the both of them to meet him halfway. “I’m afraid I’m not, and might never be the person you think you’re in love with.”

“Francesco, I’ve seen you, and I know you, and I love _ you_. You think I’m perfect? You know I’m not.” He moved in closer, a breadth, a hair away, so close that Francesco could feel him breathe — imagined he could feel his heartbeat. Lorenzo took his face in his hands, so gentle, and Francesco had to tilt his head up to keep his eyes fixed on Lorenzo’s blue ones, drawn together like he was magnetic north and Lorenzo was magnetic south. “And— I see you.” 

This was true. From the start, even when Francesco had long since stopped expecting anyone to do anything but see right through him, Lorenzo had seen him. From that very first meeting in the library just a few short months ago, through countless dinners with the family, when Francesco had wanted to shrink from the light, Lorenzo had coaxed him out, and those late nights, sitting shoulder to shoulder with each other in the soft, surreal space of night, baring souls and hearts and dreams to each other. Lorenzo had seen him. He had seen him and loved him anyways. Loved him _ because_. 

“I’m afraid,” Francesco whispered, his final argument, heart in his throat.

“You think I’m not terrified?”

“It’s different, you know it is.”

“Yes,” Lorenzo said, solemn. “I know. If you give me your heart Francesco, I’ll be careful. I promise. I’ll do everything in my power to keep it safe. I swear this.”

God help him, Francesco believed him. He saw the truth of it in Lorenzo’s eyes.

Francesco surrendered. Lorenzo moved in for the kill. Their lips met.

\--

In retrospect, it was quite a good thing that Lorenzo knew what he was doing, because Francesco sure as fuck didn’t know how to kiss. He was a quick learner though.

“You’ve had me tied up in knots for the last few months, trying to tell you that I love you,” Lorenzo said, from where he was pressing Francesco up against the wall. They were stumbling their way back to Lorenzo’s room, and laughing between kisses at how ridiculous they probably looked, unwilling to separate even for a few minutes. “I fucking love your hair,” he added, seemingly apropos to nothing, sinking his hands into the soft, thick riot of curls. 

Francesco laughed, low and sweet. “It’s not exactly been a cakewalk over here either,” he said, and Lorenzo pressed in again, ravenous for another kiss.

“I’m yours,” Francesco said, and wasn’t that true? He was ceding his heart to Lorenzo, but it felt like a victory regardless, because hadn’t Lorenzo ceded his heart to him as well?

“Yours too,” Lorenzo returned, and his hands were shaking when he put a hand to Francesco’s cheek, and it took a few fumbling tries before he managed to pull open his own bedroom door. 

“Wait, I have to say it back first—” Francesco said, pulling at Lorenzo's hand to stop him before they crossed the threshold. He was viscerally aware of his heart beating fast and live in his chest, and he felt wild and freed and rapturous. It was a triumph and it was a victory. Lorenzo turned to look at Francesco, patient and noble, but just a man after all, and eyes filled with enough love and adulation that Francesco felt breathless with it, and he thought, God, I want this for the rest of my life.

“I love you, Lorenzo,” Francesco said, and laughed at the elation that spread over Lorenzo’s fine features at the words. Then they tumbled into the room, euphoric and full of feeling.

\--

They were sitting at the breakfast table, as per any other morning, except that Francesco couldn’t quite look at Lorenzo’s stupid self-satisfied, smug face without thinking about the early hours of the morning they had spent, rather entwined in each other. His body, mapped and delineated like a once-foreign, now familiar land, beneath a gentle touch. His legs still felt shaky, and the bastard knew it, from the way his eyes were twinkling.

“Are you sure you’re alright, Ciccio?” Guglielmo said, frowning over his coffee. “You’re looking a little flushed.”

“Yes— I mean, that is, I am,” Francesco said, like some kind of idiot, which wasn’t obvious at all.

Guglielmo’s frown only deepened, and he slowly put down his cup, like he hadn’t really wanted to get into a scrap this early in the morning, but he would in the name of brotherly concern, if Francesco didn’t spill all of his secrets right then. Francesco looked over helplessly at Lorenzo, who was grinning. 

“Come here,” Lorenzo said, smirking. 

“No,” Francesco said, obstinate as ever, but he was starting to smile anyways, damn it, and Lorenzo knew it.

“Come here,” Lorenzo insisted, and when Francesco refused to move on sheer principle, the lanky bastard reached out his long arms, pulled Francesco off his own chair, halfway into his lap, curved a hand around the back of his neck, and kissed him soundly on the mouth. 

“I fucking knew it!” Giuliano was howling in the background. There was delighted laughter from both Bianca and Lucrezia, and Guglielmo was smiling too. The kitchen was warm and filled with light, and Francesco’s heart felt fair ready to burst with happiness. This was not an illusion, not sand slipping through his fingers. This was something solid, real, and warm. This was his family. 

“Love you,” Lorenzo muttered in the upturned corner of his mouth, pulling off a little to smile at him, and then bending to press their foreheads together. The force of that golden smile would’ve made Francesco breathless again, even if he hadn’t just had the breath kissed out of him.

“Love you,” Francesco said back, and he wondered why he had waited so long when it was the most natural thing in the world to say.

\--

When Francesco told his board that he was selling the Pazzi Bank to the Medici and furthermore, that they would soon be out of a job, they had a meltdown of truly titanic proportions. Francesco stood firm and weathered it, until at last they had tired themselves out shouting and howling, and come to the horrifying realization that he was no longer the meek, uncertain shadow that had allowed himself to be bullied and manipulated.

“You’re making the biggest mistake of your life,” Salviati said at last, and when Francesco looked at him, his face was twisted into an ugly sneer, “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Francesco stopped by the doorway, and then turned back to gaze upon the monsters of his childhood that had once loomed so large, and he realized that they were small, cruel men after all, faces twisted up in rictuses of anger and terror. “Maybe I am,” he agreed, at peace and untouchable with it. “But it’s my mistake to make.” 

And wasn’t that it? He’d never be perfect — he’d never not second-guess himself or feel at odds with himself. It was perhaps his nature. Maybe in time, he’d grow more — he was only twenty-seven — and grow into himself and into a sense of self assurance. But these decisions were his own, and he was his own master. He had autonomy and agency, and it was time that he trusted himself to make leaps of faith. To give himself a try, even if he was terrified of being wrong. 

He shut the door behind him. 

\--

Francesco returned to Rome. 

Not for good, but just to pack up his apartment and office, and wrap up some last loose ends. He’d told Martina that he wasn’t coming back as soon as things were fully decided upon with the bank. 

His family was in Florence. Lorenzo was in Florence. His home was in Florence. Three ways to say the same thing. And — they needed historians in Florence too, after all. 

(“Are we moving too fast?” He asked Lorenzo once, half-afraid that Lorenzo would say yes, and this new and fragile thing would crumble just as quickly as it had begun to grow.

“I want to be with you forever,” Lorenzo said in return, with the kind of indomitable conviction that could convince mountains to move. “And we make our own rules.”

There were good days and bad days, and they argued sometimes. But they fit together — their love was a pure and real thing, and by this, Francesco meant that it wasn’t that they didn’t fight, but that they would always come back to one another, because they had deep, irrevocable, faith and trust in each other, and what they were building together.)

Walking over to his old office for the last time though, he took some time to wander and drink in all the little places and fragments he’d been too cut up to appreciate and hold close over the past few years he’d been living there. The quaint cafe where he’d sat when he couldn’t bear to be completely alone anymore, watching people and tourists come and go. The cracked blue tiled pavilion he’d accidentally stumbled over five years ago, new to the city and still more overwhelmed than lonely. The crumbling steps on one side of the Coliseum, where he’d sat after successfully defending his thesis, alight with both a strange joy and an aching emptiness and dissatisfaction. 

But — that wasn’t quite true. Even when he didn’t realize it, he’d absorbed some pieces of this place into his heart. Even if he was truly happy to be coming home to Florence, there were bits of him that belonged to Rome too. It was bittersweet and strange, to finally understand, just as he was leaving, that yes, it had been somewhat of a home after all — a place that had played center stage to many of his biggest achievements, and to many years of his youth, as ill-spent as they might have been.

On his way out of the storage closet office where he had received a call, some months ago, that would change his life, he ran into Martina. It was a little awkward, because they had already officially bid each other goodbye only a short while earlier, but then it struck Francesco that there was something he needed to say to her that he hadn’t before. “Martina!” He called out just as she was about to exit the stairway, hastily chasing her a few steps to bring her within hearing range. 

She turned her head, a figure silhouetted in the light of the higher levels of the building. “Thank you.” He hesitated a moment, and then plunged on. “You helped me with my dissertation and believed in my work when there was no one else. And I want you to know that I was and am truly grateful. I wouldn’t be where I am today without your support.”

Martina looked at him, a small but real smile lifting the edges of her usually stern mouth. “I believed and believe in you because you are deserving of it. Be happy, Francesco,” she said then, solemn, and shook his hand.

And here, another chapter of his life at a close.

\--

When he stepped onto the train back to Florence, he was abruptly struck by the sensation that this was like a facsimile of the pilgrimage that he had made months ago. If he closed his eyes, he could see himself as he had been — resigned to a lifetime of pain, misery, and loneliness, making his way back to a dreaded and nightmarish past, tormented by ghosts. 

And yet, the seemingly insurmountable turmoil that had roiled within his stomach had been put to rest at long last. In Rome he had so often thought himself completely invisible, vaporous and incorporeal - had even coveted the protection of anonymity, the sensation that he was not truly present in the living world. 

Francesco didn’t want to be invisible anymore. 

When he opened his eyes, he was in the present. When he took a seat and looked out the window, at the landscape flying by, taking him home, he was returning not to a past, but to a future. 

To Lorenzo. 

God. Being in love was terrifying. It was exhilarating. It was glorious. Something that was so common could also be so obscure, so impossible, so precious. An exercise in complete contrasts, it eclipsed an absolute definition.

Back in Florence and off the train, Francesco’s feet brought him down familiar paths, and he found himself outside Palazzo Medici almost without thinking. 

For a moment, Francesco stood there, drawing slow breaths, looking at the building in the dusky twilight, wreathed with a backdrop of twinkling stars, the rest of Florence rising up behind it. Within its walls lay his family. The beating heart of a home. 

He marveled at how long a journey it had been, those fraught and winding paths which had finally led him back home. It was a healing two decades in the making. 

When he took a breath of the crisp Florentine air, he imagined it filling his body and making it an indelible part of the rich fabric of the city.

In Florence, Francesco thought. The air is rife with possibility. 

Looking up, he saw figures silhouetted in the windows — shadows, backlit against the shades, dark and shifting. Bianca, dancing with Guglielmo to something on the radio. Giuliano, throwing something at Lorenzo’s head and the ensuing wrestling. Lucrezia, head thrown back, laughing at all of them. They are happy.

Francesco unlocked the door, opened it, and walked in to meet his future. 

  
  
  


**coda:**

The days were short now, and the nights long and starlit. 

Sandro had come to paint Francesco.

They sat in the library, Francesco seated on a couch, positioned with his head turned slightly away from Sandro at a three-fourths angle. Sandro sat in front of him on a wooden stool, squinting at his easel. In this improvised studio, there was a crumpled white sheet underneath his easel and little table, which held his palette, brushes, and a jar of turpentine. The windows had to be cracked open, given the fumes, but it was gray and rainy outside, which Sandro bemoaned passionately.

Lorenzo wandered in, humming tunelessly, eating from a bowl of fruit. He leaned over into Francesco’s space to put a ruby red grape in his mouth. When he bit into it, it burst over his tongue, sweet and juicy, redolent of warmer weather.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Sandro bellowed, waving his arms and splattering paint everywhere. “Get the fuck out of the artist’s workspace, you absolute fuckhead! And Francesco, don’t you dare move!” 

“This is my house, you little troll,” Lorenzo protested loudly, flipping him off. He acquiesced though, and pressing a soft kiss to Francesco’s cheek and then to his lips, he ambled off again, shouting for Giuliano not to eat all of Bianca’s cookies.

Francesco burst out laughing as soon as Lorenzo left. 

“Is he it?” Sandro asked, a small, genuine smile starting to spread across his face. His hand hovered over the canvas, heedless of the dripping vermilion paint. 

“I don’t know,” Francesco replied. “But God, I hope he is.”

This was how Sandro captured Francesco in portrait — beautiful, smiling, and gloriously hopeful. It was a wondrous sight to behold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this very intermittently and sporadically over a long period of time. This past year was hard as fuck. This is all to say, if anyone is out there, still reading this, I’m so sorry that this is so late in coming. A good 85% of this chapter was written a long time ago, and I was sitting on like 8k words for months, because I didn’t know if I liked this story, and then for most of this summer, I was sure I didn’t want to finish it at all. But, I also wanted to give Francesco and Lorenzo a happy ending in this timeline. 
> 
> Some final words! I set out to write something hopeful. I still don’t know if I’m happy with this (particularly chapter 2, ugh), or whether it’ll stand up to the test of time, but this is it. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read and comment — without you, I truly would never have finished this.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this story!
> 
> [tumblr](https://scheherazaaade.tumblr.com/)


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